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Comment by 1024core | Hacker News Reader

I used to browse /r/india . Then one day Reddit recommended I check out /r/chodi (a sub full of memes and random talk). So I said sure, visited it, commented a couple of times.

Next thing I know, I'm banned from /r/india. For participating in a sub that was recommended by Reddit itself!

And there's no appealing these bans.

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I can only imagine someone condescendingly explaining that this was a test of your ethical character. By participating in it or other subreddits, like /r/BigChungus, you exposed yourself as an agent of hate. And then someone who might as well have had their image traced for a picture on the also-banned /r/smuggies would say "The only winning move is not to play."

Between that sort of nonsense and the redesign, they've Digg-ed themselves a hole and as soon as a viable competitor appears, it might just collapse as catastrophically.

I don't think so. I don't like reddit, but none of this is actually meaningful. Their active user rate has gone up exponentially since the redesign. People getting banned globally is standard on other social media networks, and the vast majority of redditors aren't banned from any subreddits (with actual global site bans being incredibly rare, too).

There's no reason that reddit would collapse if they maintain the status quo, because the status quo (while worse) is still better than 90% of other sites on the internet. The average quality of user has gone down, but that's inevitable online.

Mods can ban everyone for almost any or even no reason. Unless some racist or otherwise illegal reason would be given, the Reddit admins keep their hands off bans.

But the recommendation level came from Reddit, not from the mods of /r/india.

You think that's bad, consider some of the ex-member affiliated subreddits for high demand religions. One in particular is monitored closely by official (employed by said religion) and unofficial member representatives and if any joint/xpost occurs it is immediate ban. The official side has been demurred as a "news clipping service" in the past.

Same thing, different day, just a new platform to continue these kinds of failing sociological controls.

I'm not a big fan of Reddit as a company but that's not really their fault – that's a moderation problem (from the mods of /r/india). You liked the sub enough to comment in it so clearly it was a good rec!

I would shift the blame back to Reddit here, because they exposed data to mods that are completely unrelated to the subreddit. Another problem is the non-existing appeal process.

you're suggesting comments should not be visible on your profile? but visible on the page they are commented on? not sure how this would make sense.

That wasn’t what I read, but it’s a lovely idea. Is that something we can have?

this would have the effect of making everyone's activity private to everyone except for scrapers (the actual bad people nobody wants to see their activity). Not sure how this would increase privacy at all. Activity on reddit outside of private subreddits is known to be public

There is no technological solution to most social problems, and you can hardly expect Reddit to mediate social problems like ban appeals at scale (I mean, you can, but it won't happen for $ reasons).

Most of the big subreddits are co-opted by toxic, power-mad moderators, or completely devoid of moderation entirely. A complete purge & reset wouldn't be a bad idea.

>I would shift the blame back to Reddit here, because they exposed data to mods that are completely unrelated to the subreddit.

GP mentioned that he "commented a couple of times", which means that his participation in the other subreddit is public knowledge.

"participation" can take multiple forms. As far as I remember, I actually challenged some of the more egregious posts I saw on /r/chodi, but didn't spend too much time there, as who has the time to educate the whole planet?

If that other sub is so bad, then Reddit should ban it outright; why recommend it to users only to get them banned in other subs?

>If that other sub is so bad, then Reddit should ban it outright

Because reddit is generally hands off when it comes to moderation. It generally doesn't replace moderators nor punishes moderators for their actions.

>why recommend it to users only to get them banned in other subs?

probably because the recommendation algorithm isn't smart enough to figure that out.

Using a VPN and alt accounts are practically a necessity. I have 3 main accounts: one only posts on niche hobby forums, one for "clean" subreddits (/r/news, pics and the like), and one for anything remotely controversial.

Similar here. I differentiate by how little I care about revealing my actual identity and location. Like for hobbies and stuff I really don’t care if people know my approximate location. But for some stuff… dudes are crazy. Would rather not get doxxed.

Maybe this is how Reddit is juicing the numbers; force users to create several alts, and voila! our DAU are up!!1!

Anyone can build a bot that automatically watches any submissions to any subreddit, and bans those users from their subreddit. Like it or hate it, reddit is very hands-off with how subreddits are moderated beyond maintaining overall site rules.

Most larger subreddits are managed pretty poorly.

Reddit has disclosed that even your upvotes on other posts and comments that they deem unsavory can be used to automatically ban you.

Most bans are done by moderators, and moderators don't have access to upvote information.

> I check out /r/chodi (a sub full of memes and random talk)

That sub seems to be regularly featured on r/AgainstHateSubReddits

Misogyny

https://www.reddit.com/r/AgainstHateSubreddits/comments/na9y...

Racism

https://www.reddit.com/r/AgainstHateSubreddits/comments/ly6n...

https://www.reddit.com/r/AgainstHateSubreddits/comments/jh3j...

Islamophobia :

https://www.reddit.com/r/AgainstHateSubreddits/comments/ndor...

https://www.reddit.com/r/AgainstHateSubreddits/comments/mu1a...

https://www.reddit.com/r/AgainstHateSubreddits/comments/m71k...

https://www.reddit.com/r/AgainstHateSubreddits/comments/nap7...

https://www.reddit.com/r/AgainstHateSubreddits/comments/mvha...

https://www.reddit.com/r/AgainstHateSubreddits/comments/nbh1...

Transphobia

https://www.reddit.com/r/AgainstHateSubreddits/comments/mm0l...

https://www.reddit.com/r/AgainstHateSubreddits/comments/mfot...

I'm not saying those linked comments are not authentic, but r/AgainstHateSubreddits does post hateful content on subreddits they want to get banned.

Sounds like a spontaneously organized social feedback community. Interesting.

Does it matter? No matter who originally posted the content, if it’s allowed by the mods and upvoted by the subreddit’s users, that should reflect on /r/chodi.

An against hate subreddit that doubles as a hate factory against other threads? How modern..

You can't fight hate with hate; you can bet your top dollar that those who try end up being worse than the ones they fight against...

What's the appropriate feeling about hate/hate subreddits? Mild annoyance?

Is there any evidence for that assertion?

I used to be an active mod on a somewhat active subreddit, not going to say which one. I can say that it was rather suspicious to get pinged to an AHS thread made about a post that was less than 7 minutes old. There's a report button under every post, so the idea that this person couldn't have just used that instead of posting a big dramatic post makes me highly suspicious of AHS.

There's no feedback loop on reports. They disappear into the ether, possibly never to be acted upon. It shouldn't be surprising users have zero faith they'll accomplish anything on their own.

Sure, but I think it's fair to wait longer than 10 minutes before doing a big post maligning a subreddit for "letting hate slide". The post being 7 minutes old before it was posted on AHS is not an exaggeration.

AHS could have the best intentions but karma addicted folks jumping on such a post to get a blitz of upvotes is always going to happen.

I'm amazed that the reddit mobile app pushes notifications about upvote thresholds by default - it is incredibly trashy.

I was pretty surprised because I just looked back at the AHS thread and there are hundreds of upvotes in there. It must've been euphoric

You're going to need to provide a citation for such a big claim.

While I cannot provide a citation, The posts linked by the user seem to show most of them were by a single person whose profile became active just for posting on that sub.

Anecdotally, I used to mod a sub which suddenly became active due to a meme. I got messages from mods of different subs offering to help or asking me to make them mods. When I refused. the sub started getting reported for comments made by new users(Auto mod was not much helpful back then), The sub died out along with the interest on meme. If someone were to say there is a mod cartel on reddit, I wouldn’t doubt it one bit.

Purportedly, a former AHS footsoldier talks about some of what goes on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG8xWJaJO-c

I've heard about AHS false flag operations many times, but i've never seen incontrovertible evidence of it. It feels like something that competent and technically savvy mods should be able to document. I'm not sure how many mods are even one of competent and technically savvy, let alone both.

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