I find it kind of funny that people are getting so excited. Reddit has long had a policy of banning users who breach the site rules. /r/The_donald has long had a policy of breaching site rules including brigading, harassment, threats and sharing personal information. The users of that forum have literally been linked to public shootings. Given how often the breaches occur it seems quite reasonable to actually step in.<p>You'll note that with literally any other sub-reddit, the response to this behaviour would have simply been to shut down the sub-reddit. How many second chances do you need? Personally I would've thought the first person shooting up a restaurant would've been the red line but apparently not.
I personally think that this article buried the lede as far as controversial Reddit actions go. Users now can be (and have been) banned for upvoting posts in quarantined subreddits (both on the right - T_D - and the left - Chapo Trap House - among others). I've seen controversy erupt all around Reddit about this and it doesn't feel right to me. If the content that people are upvoting is bad enough to get banned over shouldn't it just be removed from the site and not left up to upvote?<p>Edit: the official policy is that only upvoting rule breaking posts will be cause for banning which makes sense. The Redditors I've heard from claim differently but are obviously biased. So take what I said with a grain of salt.
There is more info & conjecture on r/subredditdrama for those interested:<p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/f9g0t9/reddit_today_announced_that_it_would_be_removing/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/f9g0t9/redd...</a><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/f9xk6p/continuing_on_from_yesterdays_shit_show_the_mod/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/f9xk6p/cont...</a>
It's ironic that this publication is ostensibly anti-censorship. One of the few things I know about this subreddit is how quick they were to delete posts and ban commenters that didn't fit in with their worldview.
Don't know about the politics, but we beat up each other too much:<p>People end up in groups based on their journey to find someone who validates their hardship.<p>In 201x, the process goes something like this:<p>When we struggle, we reach out for help, and rather than finding articles that are soothing chicken soup, they're news articles that we are worthy of contempt based on characteristics we have. The reader may get angered, as preposterously, some how, a specified group of people's needs and niche circumstance eclipses everything else. The algorithms leads to a string of sensational articles about how society needs to be restructured honor the whims of people based on a trait and exceptional edgecase circumstances.<p>Respect is conditional based on tribal loyalty and repeating generalized tropes with religious zeal - if you dare to dissect it as a social construction - you're out of the club. You're not enlightened, don't get it, and generally what's wrong with society, somehow.<p>I think general miserliness and insensitivity create the conditions for people to resort to unifying over absurd polarizing generalizations above all else. If our feelings and worth are based on preconditions, I'd assume it'd be pretty hard to build consensus, cooperate and make everyone feel loved and cared for.<p>That said, when people squabble over rhetorical devices instead of unifying to improve the conditions of legal persons universally, it's great for the stock market.
What is really happening is reddit is just taking over all the most popular subreddits. They want to control the main vibe of the site. Understandable for a corporation but not in line with the original idea of the founders.
Advertising and free discussion do not mix, at all. It is not surprising this sort of thing is being done by a company whose true customers are their advertisers, not users. Internet companies who mess with user content to appease advertisers are going to learn soon enough that they can't serve both masters at least for anything anyone is very passionate about, like politics.<p>When I was a kid®, this sort content lived in web forums or newsgroups hosted by interested parties. You were unlikely to find any of it unless you went looking for it. It is probably best if it goes back to that.<p>Internet pro-tip: If you don't want to be beholden to reddit, YouTube, Twitter, etc. don't use them, it is really that simple.
"""<p>Under these new rules, users can be warned or even suspended for simply “upvoting policy-breaking content within quarantined communities.”<p>"""<p>That's an interesting policy. I can see the benefit if one's goal, as owner of a forum, is to constrain the tone of the forum.<p>I wonder how the tone of Hacker News, for example, is changed by users upvoting comments in clear violation of forum policy.
Worth pointing out that Reddit up/downvotes have been heavily monitored for as long as Reddit fought voting rings. At least ten years. Any "suspicious" account has its voting rights neutered: The arrows become placebo buttons. I've observed this with every Reddit account I've owned (another certain website does this).
It looks like they've moved to <a href="https://thedonald.win/" rel="nofollow">https://thedonald.win/</a> - I wonder if they're using a fork of reddit's old source code. The site feels like a subreddit.
So I tried to visit <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/</a> to see what the fuss is about, but apparently Reddit wants me to jump through hoops to give them my email to even be able to view it. Is there any archive site or whatever that will let me view this subreddit without giving reddit my personal information?
What does this do besides drive them to Whatsapp? Indian Nationalist movement grew to the level it is today in part because of the rapid growth of Nationalist whatsapp echo-chambers.
Reddit’s letter to the forum mods:<p><a href="https://i.imgur.com/lX83eZV.png" rel="nofollow">https://i.imgur.com/lX83eZV.png</a>
A theoretical example<p>1. I develop a community dedicated to fascism.
2. I appoint moderators who are themselves avid ideological defenders of fascism.
3. Given the motives for belonging to the subreddit, the users naturally chafe at and violate the sitewide rules for reddit. They have their own interpretations of how to best implement and promote fascism.
4. Because of the moderators' sympathies for the underlying motives and tendencies, abuse and rule-breaking continues.<p>Is anyone at fault here other than myself, the moderators, and the users?<p>PS: This article is poorly written and doesn't actually explain any of actual things going on in the_donald, it just insinuates a political agenda to this happening.
News sites like NYT and WSJ have introduced a featured comments section that is curated by the editorial team. In order to expose reddit users to different biases could the politics sub appoint a moderation team “fairly” and pick a few featured comments to expose reddit users to different leanings?
Reddit has become highly successful as a political discussion forum for people from pretty much every part of the spectrum, but the moderation is utterly opaque. Even relatively centrist subreddits, such as /r/Canada, have mods who ignore the published moderation rules of their own subreddit and do what they please. If they don't like a thread or post it just disappears, even if it violated no rule. Reddit's moderation system is designed to prevent users from seeing how it works.<p>The result is a cocktail of factors ripe for exploitation:<p>1. Some political subreddits have hundreds of thousands of users and are highly influential.<p>2. Mods have unrestricted power and virtually no accountability. Users have no way to check that moderation is fair and unbiased.<p>3. Mods are unpaid and anonymous.<p>If Russia or China specifically set out to design a way to influence foreign politics, Reddit would be a fantastic platform to do just that. If you can get mods in your pocket you can promote or suppress issues to suit whatever agenda you desire.<p>If Reddit were going to try to reign in the very worst of its mods, /r/The_Donald would probably be a good place to start. Most reddit users view that forum as a cesspool that was quarantined for good reason. However, the methods Reddit is using here are as opaque as that of the moderators themselves. There has been no direct communication to users. All the reporting on this "purge" is sourced from the purged moderators themselves. While I have no sympathy for the mods of /r/The_Donald whatsoever, the way Reddit is operating here is indeed reminiscent of a totalitarian state's propaganda ministry. They permit much, but certain things bring the fist down hard, and it's done in a way that most people are not meant to see.<p>If you rely on Reddit for political information then you are making yourself vulnerable to unknown influences. While reddit is a fantastic resource in many ways, it's simply not safe to rely upon for certain things.<p>With most traditional news sources now being owned by a small number of international conglomerates, there is a real need for alternative forums of political discussion. Reddit, as it currently exists, should not be that forum. However, with changes something like Reddit could be made to work. Such a forum would need to make moderation much more transparent. You can't give mods the power to simply disappear that which they don't like. Users need to be able to examine the actions of moderators and question them. Taking away the toy of unchecked, anonymous power would naturally make it harder to find mods, so they might actually have to be <i>paid</i>. How you make money like Reddit does without volunteer moderators is a problem worth solving, as is finding a way to select moderators that can be trusted by the community they serve and not necessarily the company paying them.
Any other subreddit would have simply been banned long ago for unremitting and unrepentant rule breaking and evasion. And by the subreddit moderators themselves, no less, not just the users!
The 'frontpage of the internet' is actively taking control of the subreddit of a presidential candidate, in an election year. I know that HN is highly against Trump, and probably cheer for this decision, but how is this not a democratic issue?
I think the approach is bizarre. How will replacing 1/2 of T_D mods with new management solve anything? What is the goal? I would really like to understand what is going on in the room when these ideas are presented.<p>T_D is a cesspool. It's not the only cesspool on Reddit. It is a special cesspool with special attention and solutions that are tricky, especially in an election year. At some point, big tech companies are going to have to articulate their role (wanted or not) in tweaking society.