Comment by jabberwcky | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jabberwcky | Hacker News Reader

As usual the times is great at telling a story, but in this case one built entirely on a cropped screenshot. See https://i.imgur.com/KZGwIw9.png for the reality of the naked profiteering the mods were planning.

I think it's more interesting how Reddit responded to it. Their willingness to quickly roll the heads of folk pouring months of their lives into moderation suggests perhaps they capitalize on these dramas to shore up control of their own communities. It makes a lot of sense from Reddit's perspective to not have any superstar moderators be seen to 'own' or have excessive user loyalty from the group they're responsible for. Such things could easily lead to exoduses or public spats with the admins that could be overall bad for the site.

Also consider the public rationale ("we don't care why, disruptive folk will always be removed") applied to moderators when in both of these uproars, it was actually a single user ("SpeaksInbooleans") responsible for lighting the fires. AFAIK he is still a member of the group

As usual the times is great at telling a story, but in this case one built entirely on a cropped screenshot

The article makes it clear, this is not based on a single cropped screenshot. It's based on many screenshots, a Discord discussion, a discussion in a moderators-only group, and interviews with six confirmed moderators.

I got that much, and I only read half of the article.

> many screenshots, a Discord discussion, a discussion in a moderators-only group

These all refer to exactly the same thing.

How do you suppose the article's tone would change had they mentioned in the second paragraph plans to donate any earnings to charity?

They did mention it. Did you read the article? From the article:

> When reached on their new Twitter account, the top moderators said they wanted to strike a movie deal, but were planning to give any proceeds to charity.

“Them trying to make it look like we are cash grabbing is so dishonest,” the moderators wrote.

In paragraph 27, after spending paragraphs 3-26 documenting the public reaction to a dramatic half-truth revealed in paragraph 2. This is called storytelling. You're likely aware article order is deeply important, but if not, consider reading https://slate.com/technology/2013/06/how-people-read-online-... . The bottom line is most visitors likely only read the half-truth.

Having worked with writers in these very fields, I can assure you they write with the intention that you read the entire article and anything but reading the entire article is an unintended incomplete communication. A protocol broken, if you will. Not a conspiracy to hide the truth. Them potentially maybe donating to charity is not the lede.

That's perhaps unsurprising.. it certainly would be far from the first industry to suffer from institutional blindness to any inconvenient metric that might challenge a self-stated purpose

You could say that about anyone or anything at any time and to any end including wild, unsubstantiated conspiracy theories. I don't think it's very constructive.

Wow, where did you find that screenshot? It completely changes the narrative of what happened. Why isn't this well known on the subreddit? The current mods (after the admins stepped in) keep saying they're the "good ones" and u/zjz is endorsing that.

I got the screenshot from one of the deposed mods, who has been around since 2012 (I'm one of the earliest sub members FWIW, but never a mod), he was part of the last cohort of "good ones" following the deposing of the sub founder. This person certainly is not a friend, I'd generally struggle to befriend the kind of personality attracted to Reddit's system of moderation, and especially not after already witnessing the many concealed knives.

Hopefully this also answers the question of why you haven't seen it before.

Is any of this unexpected? Not at all, it's Reddit, this is structural. That's why I find the actions and encouragement from the admins far more interesting.

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