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Why Reddit moderators are “censoring” Glenn Greenwald’s latest

185 points by DocFeind 13y ago

jere 13y ago
tl;dr: /r/news considers the piece an opinion piece and they don't allow those. And here's the last paragraph of The Incerpt aticle that makes clear it's opinion: >Whatever else is true, no government should be able to engage in these tactics: what justification is there for having government agencies target people – who have been charged with no crime – for reputation-destruction, infiltrate online political communities, and develop techniques for manipulating online discourse? But to allow those actions with no public knowledge or accountability is particularly unjustifiable.
- Phlarp 13y ago
  This feels too convenient. And maybe just a little bit ironic given the subject matter?
  - jere 13y ago
    If you've ever used reddit, you'll have noticed that subreddits have pretty strict rules that are clearly and prominently displayed and they offer alternatives subs if your content doesn't fit. I'd hardly call any of this convenient. It's simply the way reddit filters content. http://www.reddit.com/r/news/wiki/rules http://www.reddit.com/r/news/wiki/rules
    - siegecraft 13y ago
      And if you've ever REALLY used reddit, you'll know that mods are often paid by outside parties to influence their sub-reddits, or in some cases those mods ARE the outside parties and use their subreddit to divert traffic to their sites and away from competitors.
    - makomk 13y ago
      If you've ever paid attention to Reddit, you'll have noticed that the way in which subreddit rules are enforced is neither unbiased nor clear.
- makomk 13y ago
  That's certainly /r/news' justification, but their argument doesn't wash. It's no more opinion than any other piece of investigative reporting - they all tell a particular story through the facts they select, how they describe the issue, and the conclusion they draw.
  - larrik 13y ago
    But IS investigative reporting "news"? Traditionally they've been bundled together, and there is undoubtedly overlap (depending on the piece), but at their core they could be considered quite different.
    - api 13y ago
      If you exclude investigative reporting from "news," then that means that the veracity of news is predicated on perfect trust in institutions. You must assume that all the pronouncements and press releases of governments, corporations, and interest groups are completely honest and accurate.
      - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 13y ago
        Or to maybe put it even more bluntly: If you don't consider investigative reporting to be news, then "news" becomes a synonym for what we would generally call "propaganda".
      - Semiapies 13y ago
        Which the beloved "objective" news does, uncritically rewriting press releases and cheerfully transcribing whatever spin government figures like to give under cover of anonymity. Because, and let's be blunt, "objective" news is what partisans call reporting about politicians they like that doesn't make them uncomfortable.
    - SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago
      > But IS investigative reporting "news"? Yes, absolutely. "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations." - George Orwell.
- asgard1024 13y ago
  Although I disagree with the premise that news shouldn't contain any opinion (because it's not always black and white, especially since the article in question contains original reporting), I would play a devil's advocate and argue that this isn't an opinion. The sentence states that this cannot be justified by the government, which may be a fact. Or do you know of any justification? We could maybe even prove that this contradicts freedom of speech, and therefore cannot be justified. (What I am trying to show here is that you can, to some extent, make an opinion into a fact and vice versa.)
  - raldi 13y ago
    > I disagree with the premise that news shouldn't contain any opinion Nobody's asserting that premise. The question is whether /r/news should contain opinion.
    - selmnoo 13y ago
      That is the right question. And, I think at this point, it's become abundantly clear that default subreddits should not be "randomly" moderated. Policy (written by Reddit staff) should be set for moderators to follow. When you have a website that gets visited by more than a hundred million users, this just won't do. Why are a few handful of anonymous random users dictating what is seen and not seen by millions and millions as "news? That makes no sense, something has to change. There is something quite different about "news"... from, say, "biking". Most subreddits can stay as-is, but r/news and other subreddits would probably do better with officially picked staff.
      - raldi 13y ago
        The admins (disclaimerbrag: I used to be one) prefer to exercise control one level up: by deciding which subreddits to put in the default set. So the moderators have near-absolute domain over their subreddit, but only the ones who do a good job get featured on the default front page. That restores the proper incentives and controls to the system while maximizing free speech and experimentation.
  - 13y ago
- fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
  >tl;dr: /r/news considers the piece an opinion piece and they don't allow those. Except they do allow them and apply this rule(s) at their whim. The next excuse that's trotted out is that reddit isn't a democracy moderators can do that if they want to. Go make your own subreddit if you don't like it, etc. Fine, what a shitty way to run a default subreddit. (little transparency, little accountability, etc.) >And here's the last paragraph of The Incerpt aticle that makes clear it's opinion: So what, you can find the same in a good portion of the content that remains on /r/news etc. The article is not an Op Ed, but if you like, read all but the last two paragraphs. Furthermore, the Intercept article[1] was rewritten[2] by other journalists to exclude "editorialized content" and also subsequently moderated. Missing from much of the discussion on this is the irony that the story in question exposes gov't operations whose task is ongoing infiltration and manipulation of the media. Even if you're happy to defer to the mods' interpretations that the articles written to date regarding this particular news story are appropriately moderated; you must then concede that the rules are inappropriate if they manage to effectively exclude such a timely and appropriate news story. [1] https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipula... [2] http://www.examiner.com/article/snowden-government-infiltrates-websites-uses-social-media-to-deceive-destroy http://www.examiner.com/article/snowden-government-infiltrat...
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
thrillgore 13y ago
Power users/Mods using the vague reasoning of "editorial standards" on a crowdsourced rating mechanism to game stories. Where have we seen this before???
- higherpurpose 13y ago
  My thoughts exactly. On a crowd-sourcing platform based on consensus you shouldn't need moderators messing around with the stories being posted there. As PG put it "if it's what the community wants, it's what the community wants" (even though I'm very disappointed he's still heavily penalizing stories with "NSA" in them).
  - mahranch 13y ago
    It's easy to say "Oh, you shouldn't need moderators" but the reality is, you most certainly do need them. It's like saying "Wikipedia shouldn't need mods or admins". I couldn't see wikipedia existing without them. There are just too many people out there who aim to ruin it for everyone. Without moderators the system is easier to game, communities will almost immediately go off-topic, and the lowest common denominator will win. It's naive to think that online anonymous internet forums can exist without moderation. It's even more naive to think that you can foster high-quality content without heavy-handed moderation. Subreddits like /r/Askscience just wouldn't exist without it. When you plant a rose garden, you don't just let the garden grow wild. You prune it to your liking, and to keep the garden healthy. The garden must be meticulously pruned if you want it to look beautiful. Pruning content which break the rules is the same thing.
    - thrillgore 13y ago
      You certainly do need moderation as a community reaches exorbitant scale, and if there are standards requirements to enforce. Not every online community is Something Awful or Hacker News. I'm not singling out that Reddit is a flawed community because it has moderators. I am outlining that the behavior they are taking, within their own sense of unwritten standards and "internet points" reminds me of why I left Digg. This is all further compounded with the sheer number of moderators who are editing /r/news and on other subreddits, especially those that are specifically covering the NSA/GCHQ stories.
lutusp 13y ago
> Redditors are calling it an act of censorship. It's not as thought Reddit moderators don't censor certain fact-based topics at their personal whim: http://arachnoid.com/psychology/reddit_psychology.html http://arachnoid.com/psychology/reddit_psychology.html
- maxerickson 13y ago
  It is probably better to say sub-Reddit moderators, they are given a free hand. (That this is not consistent with their jargon doesn't really matter, the moderators of /r/AskScience can't do anything about you starting /r/Asklutuspaboutpsychology, they don't have the ability to moderate "Reddit", the various levels of site administrators do that)
  - lutusp 13y ago
    > It is probably better to say sub-Reddit moderators, they are given a free hand. Yes, true, but what Reddit moderators do reflects on Reddit itself. But if I had the power to choose, I wouldn't change anything -- the risk of one sort of suppression of freedom of expression must be balanced against another. I think the outcome should be decided by the public, and (as with the topic of this thread) the Streisand Effect will resolve these kinds of issues. For me, the problem with r/askscience is that the moderator doesn't understand science. He thinks science has no formal definition, that philosophers haven't decided what is and is not science -- therefore psychologists can call what they do science. That's false, but it's just someone's opinion, unfortunately he's running a subReddit that influences how many people think about science.
- cwal37 13y ago
  I actually think /r/askscience is one of the best moderated subreddits, which is impressive given its size and traffic. The example you linked is incredibly frustrating to me. That blogger has a very specific mindset about a subset of problems in parts of the general field of psychology that he is hellbent on applying generally to the entire broad discipline. I went to an engineering-heavy undergrad and I saw that disdain from engineers on "softer" sciences all the time. I did not major in psychology, and parts of the field do have some serious issues, but to paint with such a broad brush and be so sure of yourself in casting aspersions on fields you have no formal training in is really gross to encounter. EDIT: Hell, I'll go a step further and say that as neuroscience continues to intersect and grow with psychology I would consider a greater portion of psychologists as scientists than engineers.
bertil 13y ago
I’m not very convinced by either side: none is trying to offer an objective take on what Greenwald tried to do. It doesn't sound impossible to get the source, filter facts from his analysis and offer that to r/news. Is this me not being a journalist, and missing the point?
jasallen 13y ago
I support the Reddit moderators. There is no censorship going on, and the idea of unbiased journalism is becoming something we don't even respect any more (to say nothing of how hard it is to achieve, but we don't even seem to agree it's a laudable goal any more). Read the article, a non-analysis based piece on the same subject made the front page and was not removed. Reddit has other subreddits for analysis pieces, that why there are subreddits. /r/news just got a new reader.
- selmnoo 13y ago
  It's not really as simple as that. If you say GG is partaking in biased journalism, who's to say whether the silence and hesitance of established news organizations (to not be as aggressively iniquisitive as GG has always been) is pro-gov bias or not? You should read Bill Keller's conversation with Greenwald here on the objectivity/partiality of news: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/28/opinion/a-conversation-in-lieu-of-a-column.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/28/opinion/a-conversation-in-... It's a little long, but it's a very, very important conversation, everyone should read it really.
  - higherpurpose 13y ago
    Agreed. I'm not liking this latest trend of saying journalists that attack the government are "biased", especially when they have strong facts to support their reasoning, and it's not just the daily senseless Obama-bashing we see on TV. I think there's a pretty big difference between these two. I really don't want this to just "fade in the background" like it happened the last time around with the NSA: http://pando.com/2014/02/04/the-first-congressman-to-battle-the-nsa-is-dead-no-one-noticed-no-one-cares/ http://pando.com/2014/02/04/the-first-congressman-to-battle-...
    - walshemj 13y ago
      No journalist is unbiased
      - selectodude 13y ago
roc 13y ago
“The story itself is irrelevant, it’s simply how the story is presented—which is why any unbiased, objective and wholly factual news article on the event would be (and is) allowed in /r/news.” That's an awfully hazardous line they're trying to walk. I understand the desire to walk it, but the inevitable hair-splitting over when articles cross a given line is going to go on forever.
nhangen 13y ago
I'd have more sympathy for GG if he wasn't using the Snowden docs to further build his personal brand. He's treating these docs like a marketer treats a new product launch, and because of that, I have little faith in his analysis. I'm happy to see /news standing up for what they believe in.
- raverbashing 13y ago
  I believe this is by design and with agreement from Snowden.
- MrZongle2 13y ago
  So what if GG is using them to build his personal brand? Are the documents authentic? Then the truth needs to be reported and disseminated as widely as possible. If GG is a self-promoting hack, it will eventually catch up to him.
  - nhangen 13y ago
    I've come to the conclusion that he is a self-promoting hack. His primary concern should be disseminating the truth, not editorializing it on an ala carte basis. His treatment of the docs is a disservice to the public.
    - Semiapies 13y ago
      His treatment beats the shit out of how the rest of the newsmedia have been treating them. These things are only getting coverage by other outlets because of Greenwald and the people working with him.
    - SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago
      > His treatment of the docs is a disservice to the public. Greenwald has been dealing with this attack for a while now, and has commented on it several times. His answers are not hard to find. Links: http://utdocuments.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/questionsresponses-for-journalists.html http://utdocuments.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/questionsresponses... http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/01/greenwald-not-hogging-snowden-documents.html http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/01/greenwald-not-h... How do you think he should be treating it? If he released all the documents all, he would be criticised for that. If he releases little bits, he would be criticised for that instead...
afreak 13y ago
Reddit moderation is generally terrible as for larger traffic areas require full time moderators, and as a result of them being non-paid, you can end up with people running the show who otherwise wouldn't get hired to do so. Luck of the draw and early adoption are really key to being a mod in r/news or elsewhere. This also leads to abuses that exist likely due to their inability to exert such control elsewhere. Part of the reason why I like HN's moderation is you do not know who is generally doing the moderation work--same goes for places like 4chan if I might say. This prevents the sort of power tripping you will see on Reddit because there isn't a way to prove your worth. While I find some of the content posted here is not to my liking, I rarely have anything if at all to say about how the site is administered. Now whether or not this is censorship is subjective. To say that Reddit is engaging in censorship in this case is a bit erroneous as these moderators are not employees. You can still post these stories elsewhere without consequence.
- sroerick 13y ago
  I don't think that anyone got censored here, and I'm a big Greenwald supporter. I think reddit needs to reform their moderator system immediately. Whether it's issues like this one, or the /r/standupshots fiasco, content is simply too controlled to be useful. It's very similar to what happened with digg. Control of the medium became less democratic and more centralized. This time, it's in the hands of moderators rather than very powerful users. The problem is the same. I'd like to see reddit eliminate the default subs and allow subs there by way of voting. As it is, it's too easy for a moderator to control a sub, and no easy way to get rid of them. Subreddits are amazing, don't get me wrong. They're just subject to becoming less useful as they get bigger. Ironically, the subreddits I really like are usually the ones with very strict moderation. Reddit needs to find a way to bridge the gap between the users who unsubscribe from all the default subs and the users who never log in. I'd like to see a reddit clone that used dogecoin for up votes and featured both increased mod power and increased transparency.
  - mahranch 13y ago
    "content is simply too controlled to be useful." Really? I believe the opposite is true. I think reddit needs more moderation. I wish mods wouldn't be as afraid to lay down the ban-hammer. I think the mods of /r/News were justified in their approach, and that these censorship stories coming out about reddit are due to an ignorance of how reddit works. The mods are fighting a battle against the lowest common denominator and losing. The beauty of reddit is that anyone can create their own subreddit and mod it however they see fit. If you want an easy going subreddit with mods that are hands-off, you're free to create one or subscribe to one. If a mod wants to rule their domain with an iron fist, their free to do that too. More importantly, the users are free to subscribe to any subreddit they wish. Users can literally vote with their feet and have done so on more than one occasion. Your proposed overhaul would change that dynamic. It's a dynamic which has helped reddit get to the level it's at now. People like to believe the collapse of digg contributed to reddit's success, but the fact is, (according to google trends), reddit had already surpassed Digg long before the big collapse.
balls187 13y ago
> How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations I knew there had to be a reason why my posts were getting downvoted.
JeremyMorgan 13y ago
Funny, that article pretty much describes why I don't participate in Reddit much. Drama, drama and more drama. Your news is filtered no matter where you go to get it. Unless you're personally there and involved with every event happening around the world, you're getting filtered news. If you don't like how /r/news is filtered don't go to /r/news. It's that simple.
- normloman 13y ago
  No it's not that simple. When you get news from a community curated source, you get a say in how it's run. You're criticism helps shape how r/news is run. In a way, places like r/news depend on participants voicing their complaints.
higherpurpose 13y ago
Ok - what about the story about webcam spying yesterday. It was #1 on r/technology for a couple of hours, and all of the sudden it disappeared from the page.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
GFK_of_xmaspast 13y ago
Maybe if he didn't want to be censored there he should have posted teen girl creepshots or some other reddit-condoned content.
madaxe_again 13y ago
Highly relevant here would be the GCHQ/NSA slides on the topic of how they've infiltrated positions of power (i.e. moderation) in online communities - reddit is specifically cited. It's all about FUD, discrediting, and censorship on fallacious grounds. It would not surprise me to learn that BipolarBear0 is a plant. It would also not surprise me to learn that he's a pedantic basement-dweller, but I don't think, given what we've learned, it's conspiratorial or paranoid to suppose that this is governmental control. It's perfectly feasible.
- mturmon 13y ago
  You have a point. It can sound like tinfoil-hattery, but there are several examples in which the FBI and other police had so thoroughly infiltrated radical groups that there were practically as many monitors as activists. This was not only a 60s and 70s thing, it has continued up to the present day in some cases.
  - mattmanser 13y ago
    It's still happening today. Massive stink when one of the UK's undercover police broke down and admitted his guilt to the media in 2010: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Kennedy_(police_officer) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Kennedy_(police_officer) How many more of them are there? Who knows. Note that it claims 22 different countries used him. And he was explicitly called out as being an agent provocateur.
    - madaxe_again 13y ago
      It's important to note that his role was not just information gathering, but also agent provocateur, riling the group into criminal acts. Also worth noting that in order to maintain his cover he had sexual relationships with his targets... Which amounts to sexual intercourse by deception - also known as rape. Oddly, he was not prosecuted for this. Utterly shameful affair, and the absence of consequence indicates complete state sanction for his crimes.
      - 13y ago
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 13y ago
"Unbiased news" - what would that even look like? As soon as you decide what to report on and what not to report on, that is a bias. If anything, this is about filtering out stories that don't fall within the consensus narrative and thus require that value judgements be made explicit and explained - what they seem to call "analysis".
- Semiapies 13y ago
  I believe the idea is the "both sides" approach, where you get quotes from those who disagree on the story at hand, then uncritically present an equal amount of quotes from both sides (and there are only ever two sides to a story). And of course, you do your best to keep out any context that might suggest one side or both is full of shit.
  - Zigurd 13y ago
    You are being too generous. "Unbiased" means you didn't ask questions outside of the talking points predigested by the press secretary's office or PR agency that prompted something to be in the news in the first place. Everything else is obviously driven by potentially dangerous and unfair opinion, since it hasn't been vetted for safety.
    - Semiapies 13y ago
      There's definitely that, too.
- vidarh 13y ago
  Whenever someone talks about wanting "unbiased news" my assumption is always that they're trying to used it as an excuse to justify enforcing their specific bias.
giardini 13y ago
The article is factual. There are only a few sentences of opinion at the end. Banning the article _was_ censorship. It should not have been banned. The article states that "... these agencies are attempting to control, infiltrate, manipulate, and warp online discourse, and in doing so, are compromising the integrity of the internet itself." Is that opinion? No, unfortunately. The documents reveal the above is only part of what the agencies are trying to do. They also speak of "ruining businesses", "leaking confidential information", etc. It instructs how to damage someone's reputation and even their psyche on the Internet. This is the worst of human deceptive behavior. This is a public relations disaster for GCHQ/NSA. Very, very bad stuff.
- SeanLuke 13y ago
  > The article is factual. There are only a few sentences of opinion at the end. Are you aware of the contradiction inherent in your two sentences here?
  - giardini 13y ago
    "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
    - mwfunk 13y ago
      When I was younger this quote didn't even make sense to me- I had no idea what Emerson was trying to express. As I've gotten older, not only did it start to make sense, but I honestly think this quote is one of the few examples of true wisdom that humanity has acquired. I think of this whenever I see the (many, many, many) examples of people who latch onto an abstract philosophy, then proceed to drive it into the ground without a hint of skepticism or devil's advocacy as they try to apply it every aspect of the world around them. People can become so enamored of an idea that they'll go to great lengths to warp their view of the world to conform to that idea, rather than update the idea based on what they see around them. Religious fundamentalists are easy targets here, but I'm thinking more of the extreme devotees of the various political perspectives. Frequently these ideas/philosophies/etc. are very good ones, but when the philosophy becomes so enshrined and calcified that it ceases to evolve, it can become something that might guide you near the truth but prevent you from ever actually attaining it. This is actually what I think of every time someone defends RMS by citing his consistency over the years. Without getting into the rightness or wrongness of his beliefs, his consistency is not a virtue. The flip side of this is the monologue in Diamond Age about hypocrisy- the tendency people have to use an example of apparent hypocrisy or inconsistency to discredit everything a person says or does. TL;DR consistency is not necessarily a sign of truth and hypocrisy is not necessarily a sign of falsehood. Neither the world nor the minds of the people in it are perfect, so neither perceived consistency nor perceived hypocrisy are 100% accurate indicators of truthiness. Nothing absolves us of our responsibility to think for ourselves and maintain a healthy skepticism about the world around us at all times.
igivanov 13y ago
I'll go with end result: the discussion has shifted from the manipulation stuff GG wrote about to censorship. Doesn't it look like a perfect example of successful manipulation?
grandalf 13y ago
I don't think the moderators are necessarily employed by the US Government. The gravitational pull of power, particularly state power, is something some people have a hard time resisting. I am pretty shocked about the ban on RT as it seems like a legitimate news org that helps fill in the gaps in coverage.
- Zigurd 13y ago
  It is very unlikely that participants in spinning online forums are direct government employees. PR agencies do this. There are even GSA schedules for buying PR services from an established group of firms. What you see on TV and read in mainstream newspapers has been steered by this PR. It would be anomalous to think online forum influence isn't on the menu of services.
detroitcoder 13y ago
After reading the article, my gut reaction was 'Oh this is an interesting article, I wonder what the HN comments have to say about it?' Then I see the top comments and they all try to discredit Greenwald as a sensationalist trying to grab publicity at the expense of honest reddit moderators. I then mentally put less validity on the article and move on to the next link. However I can't help but question if somehow my reaction was engineered by someone else. Just a thought.
smutticus 13y ago
There's no censorship going on, and Reddit is not the only place people get their news. Seriously, if /r/news is your primary news source then something is wrong with you.
cryoshon 13y ago
The conspiracy theory explanation for this is that the mods are actually government assets and censored the stories in order to make their handlers happy. I don't believe that this is consistent with the history of the NSA leaks on reddit so far, given that most of the other NSA stories have been highly visible and upvoted, though some have been deleted infrequently. Perhaps this isn't so far fetched after all, though. I checked the front pages of CNN, ABC, MSNBC, and FoxNews, and found zero mention of the NSA whatsoever, nevermind the explosive reveal of COINTELPRO style operations against the internet public.
guelo 13y ago
Why is /r/subredditdrama spilling over onto HN? Flagged.
- mindrag 13y ago
  This issue has implications far beyond reddit.
peterwwillis 13y ago
News flash: If you get all your news from a single source, you might not get a complete and unbiased picture of the news.
ryepen 13y ago
The problem with classifying this event as censorship is the subjectivity of the argument. One can propose that an individual is a subject of a government whose sole purpose is the malicious discredit of unfavorable information pertaining to that particular government's desired propaganda, but we can also propose that this particular individual believes that government conspiracies to undermine the public opinion on internet forums seems irrational. I think we can all agree that both are entirely feasible, but remain unable to provide substantial evidence that discredits the other.
adamors 13y ago
Interesting that even this post is dropping heavily on the frontpage. Posts that were submitted 6 hours ago that have less karma are higher up.

185 points by DocFeind 13y ago

jere 13y ago

tl;dr: /r/news considers the piece an opinion piece and they don't allow those. And here's the last paragraph of The Incerpt aticle that makes clear it's opinion: >Whatever else is true, no government should be able to engage in these tactics: what justification is there for having government agencies target people – who have been charged with no crime – for reputation-destruction, infiltrate online political communities, and develop techniques for manipulating online discourse? But to allow those actions with no public knowledge or accountability is particularly unjustifiable.

Phlarp 13y ago
This feels too convenient. And maybe just a little bit ironic given the subject matter?
- jere 13y ago
  If you've ever used reddit, you'll have noticed that subreddits have pretty strict rules that are clearly and prominently displayed and they offer alternatives subs if your content doesn't fit. I'd hardly call any of this convenient. It's simply the way reddit filters content. http://www.reddit.com/r/news/wiki/rules http://www.reddit.com/r/news/wiki/rules
  - siegecraft 13y ago
    And if you've ever REALLY used reddit, you'll know that mods are often paid by outside parties to influence their sub-reddits, or in some cases those mods ARE the outside parties and use their subreddit to divert traffic to their sites and away from competitors.
  - makomk 13y ago
    If you've ever paid attention to Reddit, you'll have noticed that the way in which subreddit rules are enforced is neither unbiased nor clear.
makomk 13y ago
That's certainly /r/news' justification, but their argument doesn't wash. It's no more opinion than any other piece of investigative reporting - they all tell a particular story through the facts they select, how they describe the issue, and the conclusion they draw.
- larrik 13y ago
  But IS investigative reporting "news"? Traditionally they've been bundled together, and there is undoubtedly overlap (depending on the piece), but at their core they could be considered quite different.
  - api 13y ago
    If you exclude investigative reporting from "news," then that means that the veracity of news is predicated on perfect trust in institutions. You must assume that all the pronouncements and press releases of governments, corporations, and interest groups are completely honest and accurate.
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 13y ago
      Or to maybe put it even more bluntly: If you don't consider investigative reporting to be news, then "news" becomes a synonym for what we would generally call "propaganda".
    - Semiapies 13y ago
      Which the beloved "objective" news does, uncritically rewriting press releases and cheerfully transcribing whatever spin government figures like to give under cover of anonymity. Because, and let's be blunt, "objective" news is what partisans call reporting about politicians they like that doesn't make them uncomfortable.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago
    > But IS investigative reporting "news"? Yes, absolutely. "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations." - George Orwell.
asgard1024 13y ago
Although I disagree with the premise that news shouldn't contain any opinion (because it's not always black and white, especially since the article in question contains original reporting), I would play a devil's advocate and argue that this isn't an opinion. The sentence states that this cannot be justified by the government, which may be a fact. Or do you know of any justification? We could maybe even prove that this contradicts freedom of speech, and therefore cannot be justified. (What I am trying to show here is that you can, to some extent, make an opinion into a fact and vice versa.)
- raldi 13y ago
  > I disagree with the premise that news shouldn't contain any opinion Nobody's asserting that premise. The question is whether /r/news should contain opinion.
  - selmnoo 13y ago
    That is the right question. And, I think at this point, it's become abundantly clear that default subreddits should not be "randomly" moderated. Policy (written by Reddit staff) should be set for moderators to follow. When you have a website that gets visited by more than a hundred million users, this just won't do. Why are a few handful of anonymous random users dictating what is seen and not seen by millions and millions as "news? That makes no sense, something has to change. There is something quite different about "news"... from, say, "biking". Most subreddits can stay as-is, but r/news and other subreddits would probably do better with officially picked staff.
    - raldi 13y ago
      The admins (disclaimerbrag: I used to be one) prefer to exercise control one level up: by deciding which subreddits to put in the default set. So the moderators have near-absolute domain over their subreddit, but only the ones who do a good job get featured on the default front page. That restores the proper incentives and controls to the system while maximizing free speech and experimentation.
- 13y ago
fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
>tl;dr: /r/news considers the piece an opinion piece and they don't allow those. Except they do allow them and apply this rule(s) at their whim. The next excuse that's trotted out is that reddit isn't a democracy moderators can do that if they want to. Go make your own subreddit if you don't like it, etc. Fine, what a shitty way to run a default subreddit. (little transparency, little accountability, etc.) >And here's the last paragraph of The Incerpt aticle that makes clear it's opinion: So what, you can find the same in a good portion of the content that remains on /r/news etc. The article is not an Op Ed, but if you like, read all but the last two paragraphs. Furthermore, the Intercept article[1] was rewritten[2] by other journalists to exclude "editorialized content" and also subsequently moderated. Missing from much of the discussion on this is the irony that the story in question exposes gov't operations whose task is ongoing infiltration and manipulation of the media. Even if you're happy to defer to the mods' interpretations that the articles written to date regarding this particular news story are appropriately moderated; you must then concede that the rules are inappropriate if they manage to effectively exclude such a timely and appropriate news story. [1] https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipula... [2] http://www.examiner.com/article/snowden-government-infiltrates-websites-uses-social-media-to-deceive-destroy http://www.examiner.com/article/snowden-government-infiltrat...
deleted 13y ago
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thrillgore 13y ago

Power users/Mods using the vague reasoning of "editorial standards" on a crowdsourced rating mechanism to game stories. Where have we seen this before???

higherpurpose 13y ago
My thoughts exactly. On a crowd-sourcing platform based on consensus you shouldn't need moderators messing around with the stories being posted there. As PG put it "if it's what the community wants, it's what the community wants" (even though I'm very disappointed he's still heavily penalizing stories with "NSA" in them).
- mahranch 13y ago
  It's easy to say "Oh, you shouldn't need moderators" but the reality is, you most certainly do need them. It's like saying "Wikipedia shouldn't need mods or admins". I couldn't see wikipedia existing without them. There are just too many people out there who aim to ruin it for everyone. Without moderators the system is easier to game, communities will almost immediately go off-topic, and the lowest common denominator will win. It's naive to think that online anonymous internet forums can exist without moderation. It's even more naive to think that you can foster high-quality content without heavy-handed moderation. Subreddits like /r/Askscience just wouldn't exist without it. When you plant a rose garden, you don't just let the garden grow wild. You prune it to your liking, and to keep the garden healthy. The garden must be meticulously pruned if you want it to look beautiful. Pruning content which break the rules is the same thing.
  - thrillgore 13y ago
    You certainly do need moderation as a community reaches exorbitant scale, and if there are standards requirements to enforce. Not every online community is Something Awful or Hacker News. I'm not singling out that Reddit is a flawed community because it has moderators. I am outlining that the behavior they are taking, within their own sense of unwritten standards and "internet points" reminds me of why I left Digg. This is all further compounded with the sheer number of moderators who are editing /r/news and on other subreddits, especially those that are specifically covering the NSA/GCHQ stories.

lutusp 13y ago

> Redditors are calling it an act of censorship. It's not as thought Reddit moderators don't censor certain fact-based topics at their personal whim: http://arachnoid.com/psychology/reddit_psychology.html http://arachnoid.com/psychology/reddit_psychology.html

maxerickson 13y ago
It is probably better to say sub-Reddit moderators, they are given a free hand. (That this is not consistent with their jargon doesn't really matter, the moderators of /r/AskScience can't do anything about you starting /r/Asklutuspaboutpsychology, they don't have the ability to moderate "Reddit", the various levels of site administrators do that)
- lutusp 13y ago
  > It is probably better to say sub-Reddit moderators, they are given a free hand. Yes, true, but what Reddit moderators do reflects on Reddit itself. But if I had the power to choose, I wouldn't change anything -- the risk of one sort of suppression of freedom of expression must be balanced against another. I think the outcome should be decided by the public, and (as with the topic of this thread) the Streisand Effect will resolve these kinds of issues. For me, the problem with r/askscience is that the moderator doesn't understand science. He thinks science has no formal definition, that philosophers haven't decided what is and is not science -- therefore psychologists can call what they do science. That's false, but it's just someone's opinion, unfortunately he's running a subReddit that influences how many people think about science.
cwal37 13y ago
I actually think /r/askscience is one of the best moderated subreddits, which is impressive given its size and traffic. The example you linked is incredibly frustrating to me. That blogger has a very specific mindset about a subset of problems in parts of the general field of psychology that he is hellbent on applying generally to the entire broad discipline. I went to an engineering-heavy undergrad and I saw that disdain from engineers on "softer" sciences all the time. I did not major in psychology, and parts of the field do have some serious issues, but to paint with such a broad brush and be so sure of yourself in casting aspersions on fields you have no formal training in is really gross to encounter. EDIT: Hell, I'll go a step further and say that as neuroscience continues to intersect and grow with psychology I would consider a greater portion of psychologists as scientists than engineers.

bertil 13y ago

I’m not very convinced by either side: none is trying to offer an objective take on what Greenwald tried to do. It doesn't sound impossible to get the source, filter facts from his analysis and offer that to r/news. Is this me not being a journalist, and missing the point?

jasallen 13y ago

I support the Reddit moderators. There is no censorship going on, and the idea of unbiased journalism is becoming something we don't even respect any more (to say nothing of how hard it is to achieve, but we don't even seem to agree it's a laudable goal any more). Read the article, a non-analysis based piece on the same subject made the front page and was not removed. Reddit has other subreddits for analysis pieces, that why there are subreddits. /r/news just got a new reader.

selmnoo 13y ago
It's not really as simple as that. If you say GG is partaking in biased journalism, who's to say whether the silence and hesitance of established news organizations (to not be as aggressively iniquisitive as GG has always been) is pro-gov bias or not? You should read Bill Keller's conversation with Greenwald here on the objectivity/partiality of news: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/28/opinion/a-conversation-in-lieu-of-a-column.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/28/opinion/a-conversation-in-... It's a little long, but it's a very, very important conversation, everyone should read it really.
- higherpurpose 13y ago
  Agreed. I'm not liking this latest trend of saying journalists that attack the government are "biased", especially when they have strong facts to support their reasoning, and it's not just the daily senseless Obama-bashing we see on TV. I think there's a pretty big difference between these two. I really don't want this to just "fade in the background" like it happened the last time around with the NSA: http://pando.com/2014/02/04/the-first-congressman-to-battle-the-nsa-is-dead-no-one-noticed-no-one-cares/ http://pando.com/2014/02/04/the-first-congressman-to-battle-...
  - walshemj 13y ago
    No journalist is unbiased
    - selectodude 13y ago

roc 13y ago

“The story itself is irrelevant, it’s simply how the story is presented—which is why any unbiased, objective and wholly factual news article on the event would be (and is) allowed in /r/news.” That's an awfully hazardous line they're trying to walk. I understand the desire to walk it, but the inevitable hair-splitting over when articles cross a given line is going to go on forever.

nhangen 13y ago

I'd have more sympathy for GG if he wasn't using the Snowden docs to further build his personal brand. He's treating these docs like a marketer treats a new product launch, and because of that, I have little faith in his analysis. I'm happy to see /news standing up for what they believe in.

raverbashing 13y ago
I believe this is by design and with agreement from Snowden.
MrZongle2 13y ago
So what if GG is using them to build his personal brand? Are the documents authentic? Then the truth needs to be reported and disseminated as widely as possible. If GG is a self-promoting hack, it will eventually catch up to him.
- nhangen 13y ago
  I've come to the conclusion that he is a self-promoting hack. His primary concern should be disseminating the truth, not editorializing it on an ala carte basis. His treatment of the docs is a disservice to the public.
  - Semiapies 13y ago
    His treatment beats the shit out of how the rest of the newsmedia have been treating them. These things are only getting coverage by other outlets because of Greenwald and the people working with him.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago
    > His treatment of the docs is a disservice to the public. Greenwald has been dealing with this attack for a while now, and has commented on it several times. His answers are not hard to find. Links: http://utdocuments.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/questionsresponses-for-journalists.html http://utdocuments.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/questionsresponses... http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/01/greenwald-not-hogging-snowden-documents.html http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/01/greenwald-not-h... How do you think he should be treating it? If he released all the documents all, he would be criticised for that. If he releases little bits, he would be criticised for that instead...

afreak 13y ago

Reddit moderation is generally terrible as for larger traffic areas require full time moderators, and as a result of them being non-paid, you can end up with people running the show who otherwise wouldn't get hired to do so. Luck of the draw and early adoption are really key to being a mod in r/news or elsewhere. This also leads to abuses that exist likely due to their inability to exert such control elsewhere. Part of the reason why I like HN's moderation is you do not know who is generally doing the moderation work--same goes for places like 4chan if I might say. This prevents the sort of power tripping you will see on Reddit because there isn't a way to prove your worth. While I find some of the content posted here is not to my liking, I rarely have anything if at all to say about how the site is administered. Now whether or not this is censorship is subjective. To say that Reddit is engaging in censorship in this case is a bit erroneous as these moderators are not employees. You can still post these stories elsewhere without consequence.

sroerick 13y ago
I don't think that anyone got censored here, and I'm a big Greenwald supporter. I think reddit needs to reform their moderator system immediately. Whether it's issues like this one, or the /r/standupshots fiasco, content is simply too controlled to be useful. It's very similar to what happened with digg. Control of the medium became less democratic and more centralized. This time, it's in the hands of moderators rather than very powerful users. The problem is the same. I'd like to see reddit eliminate the default subs and allow subs there by way of voting. As it is, it's too easy for a moderator to control a sub, and no easy way to get rid of them. Subreddits are amazing, don't get me wrong. They're just subject to becoming less useful as they get bigger. Ironically, the subreddits I really like are usually the ones with very strict moderation. Reddit needs to find a way to bridge the gap between the users who unsubscribe from all the default subs and the users who never log in. I'd like to see a reddit clone that used dogecoin for up votes and featured both increased mod power and increased transparency.
- mahranch 13y ago
  "content is simply too controlled to be useful." Really? I believe the opposite is true. I think reddit needs more moderation. I wish mods wouldn't be as afraid to lay down the ban-hammer. I think the mods of /r/News were justified in their approach, and that these censorship stories coming out about reddit are due to an ignorance of how reddit works. The mods are fighting a battle against the lowest common denominator and losing. The beauty of reddit is that anyone can create their own subreddit and mod it however they see fit. If you want an easy going subreddit with mods that are hands-off, you're free to create one or subscribe to one. If a mod wants to rule their domain with an iron fist, their free to do that too. More importantly, the users are free to subscribe to any subreddit they wish. Users can literally vote with their feet and have done so on more than one occasion. Your proposed overhaul would change that dynamic. It's a dynamic which has helped reddit get to the level it's at now. People like to believe the collapse of digg contributed to reddit's success, but the fact is, (according to google trends), reddit had already surpassed Digg long before the big collapse.

balls187 13y ago

> How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations I knew there had to be a reason why my posts were getting downvoted.

JeremyMorgan 13y ago

Funny, that article pretty much describes why I don't participate in Reddit much. Drama, drama and more drama. Your news is filtered no matter where you go to get it. Unless you're personally there and involved with every event happening around the world, you're getting filtered news. If you don't like how /r/news is filtered don't go to /r/news. It's that simple.

normloman 13y ago
No it's not that simple. When you get news from a community curated source, you get a say in how it's run. You're criticism helps shape how r/news is run. In a way, places like r/news depend on participants voicing their complaints.

higherpurpose 13y ago

Ok - what about the story about webcam spying yesterday. It was #1 on r/technology for a couple of hours, and all of the sudden it disappeared from the page.

deleted 13y ago

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GFK_of_xmaspast 13y ago

Maybe if he didn't want to be censored there he should have posted teen girl creepshots or some other reddit-condoned content.

madaxe_again 13y ago

Highly relevant here would be the GCHQ/NSA slides on the topic of how they've infiltrated positions of power (i.e. moderation) in online communities - reddit is specifically cited. It's all about FUD, discrediting, and censorship on fallacious grounds. It would not surprise me to learn that BipolarBear0 is a plant. It would also not surprise me to learn that he's a pedantic basement-dweller, but I don't think, given what we've learned, it's conspiratorial or paranoid to suppose that this is governmental control. It's perfectly feasible.

mturmon 13y ago
You have a point. It can sound like tinfoil-hattery, but there are several examples in which the FBI and other police had so thoroughly infiltrated radical groups that there were practically as many monitors as activists. This was not only a 60s and 70s thing, it has continued up to the present day in some cases.
- mattmanser 13y ago
  It's still happening today. Massive stink when one of the UK's undercover police broke down and admitted his guilt to the media in 2010: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Kennedy_(police_officer) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Kennedy_(police_officer) How many more of them are there? Who knows. Note that it claims 22 different countries used him. And he was explicitly called out as being an agent provocateur.
  - madaxe_again 13y ago
    It's important to note that his role was not just information gathering, but also agent provocateur, riling the group into criminal acts. Also worth noting that in order to maintain his cover he had sexual relationships with his targets... Which amounts to sexual intercourse by deception - also known as rape. Oddly, he was not prosecuted for this. Utterly shameful affair, and the absence of consequence indicates complete state sanction for his crimes.
    - 13y ago

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 13y ago

"Unbiased news" - what would that even look like? As soon as you decide what to report on and what not to report on, that is a bias. If anything, this is about filtering out stories that don't fall within the consensus narrative and thus require that value judgements be made explicit and explained - what they seem to call "analysis".

Semiapies 13y ago
I believe the idea is the "both sides" approach, where you get quotes from those who disagree on the story at hand, then uncritically present an equal amount of quotes from both sides (and there are only ever two sides to a story). And of course, you do your best to keep out any context that might suggest one side or both is full of shit.
- Zigurd 13y ago
  You are being too generous. "Unbiased" means you didn't ask questions outside of the talking points predigested by the press secretary's office or PR agency that prompted something to be in the news in the first place. Everything else is obviously driven by potentially dangerous and unfair opinion, since it hasn't been vetted for safety.
  - Semiapies 13y ago
    There's definitely that, too.
vidarh 13y ago
Whenever someone talks about wanting "unbiased news" my assumption is always that they're trying to used it as an excuse to justify enforcing their specific bias.

giardini 13y ago

The article is factual. There are only a few sentences of opinion at the end. Banning the article _was_ censorship. It should not have been banned. The article states that "... these agencies are attempting to control, infiltrate, manipulate, and warp online discourse, and in doing so, are compromising the integrity of the internet itself." Is that opinion? No, unfortunately. The documents reveal the above is only part of what the agencies are trying to do. They also speak of "ruining businesses", "leaking confidential information", etc. It instructs how to damage someone's reputation and even their psyche on the Internet. This is the worst of human deceptive behavior. This is a public relations disaster for GCHQ/NSA. Very, very bad stuff.

SeanLuke 13y ago
> The article is factual. There are only a few sentences of opinion at the end. Are you aware of the contradiction inherent in your two sentences here?
- giardini 13y ago
  "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
  - mwfunk 13y ago
    When I was younger this quote didn't even make sense to me- I had no idea what Emerson was trying to express. As I've gotten older, not only did it start to make sense, but I honestly think this quote is one of the few examples of true wisdom that humanity has acquired. I think of this whenever I see the (many, many, many) examples of people who latch onto an abstract philosophy, then proceed to drive it into the ground without a hint of skepticism or devil's advocacy as they try to apply it every aspect of the world around them. People can become so enamored of an idea that they'll go to great lengths to warp their view of the world to conform to that idea, rather than update the idea based on what they see around them. Religious fundamentalists are easy targets here, but I'm thinking more of the extreme devotees of the various political perspectives. Frequently these ideas/philosophies/etc. are very good ones, but when the philosophy becomes so enshrined and calcified that it ceases to evolve, it can become something that might guide you near the truth but prevent you from ever actually attaining it. This is actually what I think of every time someone defends RMS by citing his consistency over the years. Without getting into the rightness or wrongness of his beliefs, his consistency is not a virtue. The flip side of this is the monologue in Diamond Age about hypocrisy- the tendency people have to use an example of apparent hypocrisy or inconsistency to discredit everything a person says or does. TL;DR consistency is not necessarily a sign of truth and hypocrisy is not necessarily a sign of falsehood. Neither the world nor the minds of the people in it are perfect, so neither perceived consistency nor perceived hypocrisy are 100% accurate indicators of truthiness. Nothing absolves us of our responsibility to think for ourselves and maintain a healthy skepticism about the world around us at all times.

igivanov 13y ago

I'll go with end result: the discussion has shifted from the manipulation stuff GG wrote about to censorship. Doesn't it look like a perfect example of successful manipulation?

grandalf 13y ago

I don't think the moderators are necessarily employed by the US Government. The gravitational pull of power, particularly state power, is something some people have a hard time resisting. I am pretty shocked about the ban on RT as it seems like a legitimate news org that helps fill in the gaps in coverage.

Zigurd 13y ago
It is very unlikely that participants in spinning online forums are direct government employees. PR agencies do this. There are even GSA schedules for buying PR services from an established group of firms. What you see on TV and read in mainstream newspapers has been steered by this PR. It would be anomalous to think online forum influence isn't on the menu of services.

detroitcoder 13y ago

After reading the article, my gut reaction was 'Oh this is an interesting article, I wonder what the HN comments have to say about it?' Then I see the top comments and they all try to discredit Greenwald as a sensationalist trying to grab publicity at the expense of honest reddit moderators. I then mentally put less validity on the article and move on to the next link. However I can't help but question if somehow my reaction was engineered by someone else. Just a thought.

smutticus 13y ago

There's no censorship going on, and Reddit is not the only place people get their news. Seriously, if /r/news is your primary news source then something is wrong with you.

cryoshon 13y ago

The conspiracy theory explanation for this is that the mods are actually government assets and censored the stories in order to make their handlers happy. I don't believe that this is consistent with the history of the NSA leaks on reddit so far, given that most of the other NSA stories have been highly visible and upvoted, though some have been deleted infrequently. Perhaps this isn't so far fetched after all, though. I checked the front pages of CNN, ABC, MSNBC, and FoxNews, and found zero mention of the NSA whatsoever, nevermind the explosive reveal of COINTELPRO style operations against the internet public.

guelo 13y ago

Why is /r/subredditdrama spilling over onto HN? Flagged.

mindrag 13y ago
This issue has implications far beyond reddit.

peterwwillis 13y ago

News flash: If you get all your news from a single source, you might not get a complete and unbiased picture of the news.

ryepen 13y ago

The problem with classifying this event as censorship is the subjectivity of the argument. One can propose that an individual is a subject of a government whose sole purpose is the malicious discredit of unfavorable information pertaining to that particular government's desired propaganda, but we can also propose that this particular individual believes that government conspiracies to undermine the public opinion on internet forums seems irrational. I think we can all agree that both are entirely feasible, but remain unable to provide substantial evidence that discredits the other.

adamors 13y ago

Interesting that even this post is dropping heavily on the frontpage. Posts that were submitted 6 hours ago that have less karma are higher up.