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Comment by keewee7 | Hacker News Reader

Considering how fast Reddit is growing I think people should keep an eye on the moderators of r/worldnews and r/news. The viewership of these subreddits is several times bigger than their subscriber count because both subreddits are regularly featured on r/all and r/popular. It's also no secret that many journalists use these subreddits to gauge which topics interests people.

It's possible that in a few years all an authoritarian regime has to do to shut down bad publicity is to get a moderator on r/worldnews.

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    r/worldnews

The sub has gone to hell a good few years ago. If your opinions are anywhere right of woke, you get banned straight up. It is often considered a badge of honor to get banned from r/worldnews. A sign that you haven't fully given in to the hive mind. Funnily enough, the best world news subreddit right now is reddit.com/r/anime_titties (SFW). It started as a joke subreddit satirizing r/neutralpolitics being taken over by porn, but has somehow managed to be the best world news subreddit despite the tongue-in-cheek name.

A lot of innocuous subreddits implement sweeping bans for participation in any black-listed subreddit. r/offmychest is famous for a huge ban hammer (I'm a victim). Honestly, every subreddit that has a r/trueSubreddit version has run into this exact problem at some point.

Honestly, most of the default subs are pretty much hard-censored already. The election year has to led to the complete deterioration of wat used to be well-moderated subs like r/science and r/ask_historians.

Then there are the geographical subs. The default country subs are almost all hard-censored. r/India is so bad, that there's conspiracies about it being run by an ISI operative. Sadly, the reaction to r/India's polarization was the formation of another heavily polarized subreddit in r/india_speaks. So now we have 2 uniquely bad subreddits. In the US, I have noticed a similar thing happen to r/seattle and r/seattleWA around views on homelessness, but to a lesser degree of mutual deterioration.

Any time I step into the real world, I squarely fall into the urban atheist liberal mould. Yet for some reason, the exact same views warrant complete ostracization on a lot of these internet front pages. The insularity of the echo-chamber is mind-boggling.

I've completely quit reddit after 15 years and my life is better for it.

I've been very aggressively filtering out problematic subreddits from r/all, and it's helped tremendously.

>It started as a joke subreddit satirizing r/neutralpolitics being taken over by porn, but has somehow managed to be the best world news subreddit despite the tongue-in-cheek name.

I routinely find that the best content is on the subs that are parodying the subs you'd think would have that content.

/r/neoliberal is a surprisingly informed and nuanced take on a lot of issues

could you give some examples of these opinions? My experience is that posts like this are usually hiding some pretty ugly opinions that get dressed up as "right wing opinions", and I'd love to see a counter example where a very reasonable and respectful position is being banned/excluded. Links instead of descriptions if you don't mind.

I really don't like the assumption of guilt being thrust upon me, but I'll play along. I assume a lack of anonymity in general, so I'll share my profile. You can always dig through my HN profile too. But in the interest of good faith, please don't go around doxxing/stalking me.

The comments that got me banned on r/worldnews are here (That's the day I got banned, hadn't posted for a while before that):

https://camas.github.io/reddit-search/#{%22author%22:%22scre...

They have all been deleted from the subreddit (hard censorship), but the internet is forever.

I mean... it just looks like that whole branch of the conversation was nuked, including everyone disagreeing with you and the whole discussion about whether Modi should be called a Nazi.

I am indian (part of the society that benefits the most from Modi's economics and politics) but I just made this account (also another exhibit of how far-right my government is) to say that I read the conversation and I really think you gotta dig deeper into the social fabric of the indian culture to realise how far-right the organization (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashtriya_Swayamsevak_Sangh) behind the government (from which Modi comes) is.

They have an entirely different image of the Indian subcontinent (based on this guy's vision of "Hindutva" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinayak_Damodar_Savarkar). This image roughly includes three parts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindutva:_Who_is_a_Hindu%3F): 1. Religion 2. Culture (Caste etc) 3. National Identity Now the problem is that the government might actually not be really into building the one nation, one religion Indian subcontinent presented in the vision (yes that includes Myanmar, Pakistan, Afghanistan) but the millions of kids being trained by the RSS since forever in thousands of schools kinda do want that. The problem with Modi is not that he's a nazi or not. The problem is with a sizeable population in India who support him because they think he's their guy and will do to Muslims and other lower caste people what the Nazis did to others. Hitler is considered a strong military leader amongst that population. The last part is of course anecdotal (the sample size was around 50 people through out my life spread over different socio-economic-geographic factors. TL;DR This is going to be a problem in the long term for the world

It's funny you say this.

The people who criticize Modi are currently at the top of every english-speaking institution I know off. If anything, criticizing Modi is the easiest way to make you way up the ranks of any English-speaking institution in India. Also, please refrain from using Wikipedia on politically fraught matters. It is the biggest echo chamber of them all, in such areas.

I actually had the inverse journey. I grew up in housing the exact same "RSS are Nazis", "Savarkar wanted Aryan supremacy" opinions that get thrown around in my circles. It actually took a LOT of digging before I even started to wrap my head around the level of institutional propaganda against these persona non gratas of the Indian establishment.

I still dislike RSS, but my opinion of everyone in the Gandhi/Nehru families has plummeted. (Indira was surprisingly candid, but went completely batshit during her emergency). It requires painful digging through of first sources though.

Vikram Sampath's 2 books paint the most detailed image of Savarkar yet, warts and all. (https://smile.amazon.com/s?k=savarkar-vikram-sampath). Also, you should listen to speeches given by the RSS head himself (first sources), especially their annual year review speech. It is surprisingly inclusive. It is quite tame for India's Nazis. Urban folks like us do not realize just how much work the RSS does in rural areas on India. It took going to university in a smaller town and meeting people from poorer communities to hear about how favorably RSS was viewed as a social-welfare NGO.

> National Identity Now the problem is that the government might actually not be really into building the one nation, one religion Indian subcontinent presented in the vision (yes that includes Myanmar, Pakistan, Afghanistan) but the millions of kids being trained by the RSS since forever in thousands of schools kinda do want that

Source ? If anything, Indian Convents and Madras

> other lower caste people

The BJP has been far more inclusive of the lower castes in their power structure than the Congress ever has. Modi himself is lower caste. A substantial portion of the lower castes are voting for Modi too. Your claims are not backed up by data.

At the same time, the recent Pew research survey shows that Indians highly value diversity of religions and preservation of the diversity and freedoms to do so. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/06/29/key-finding....

Hell, more Muslims want India to be 1 mega-subcontinent-nation-state than Hindus. https://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2021/06/...

Both your links pew research links have this actual content in it: 1. More muslims believe that the partition shouldn't have happened. That is completely different from what I said about Hindus. If anything, it proves Hindus wanting a hindu nation and Muslims feeling that the partition that divided the nations along religious lines shouldn't have happened. 2. The second pew link is full of multiple results showing: a. Hindus believe being "hindu" is an essential part of being Indian. b. Mulsims and other minorities feel insecure about being their own religious selves.

Honestly, either your perception is fundamentally different from what the literal words in the links said that you're willing to misinterpret them to any length OR this was a very cleverly disguised attempt at formulating your argument using the anti-thesis of your argument as the links themselves. Secondly, I agree with you on the Nehru/Gandhi thing. (Another interesting moment is Indira Gandhi talking about population control as a cover in this british documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCI_KhfED2k)

Last please read sarvakar's treatise "Hindutva (Who is Hindu?)" in which he equates being hindu has being indian in addition to the three parts I mentioned earlier.

Now I am going to stop replying to you for my sanity.

BTW, try not misquoting the links you give. It will lead people astray.

Thank you! I've grown used to claims like yours that I was responding to, specifically "If your opinions are anywhere right of woke, you get banned straight up" to be a smoke-screen and usually casual inspection would reveal that the person making the claim wasn't guilt-free to put it lightly. I couldn't see anything ban-worthy in there, so I am glad to be wrong, in the sense that the pattern I was seeing was almost too glib to be true.

Can you tell me why you think you were banned in there though? Like, what attitude or opinion crossed the line? I don't really understand the politics under discussion, but your comments seemed substantive enough that some one could come and meaningfully disagree with you, which I would have anticipated to be a good thing (even if many people disagreed with you).

Anyway, thanks again.

Man, I'm glad I assumed good faith here.

> smoke-screen

Once burned twice shy eh. I agree, it can be hard to distinguish genuine issues and dog whistles from each other.

> If your opinions are anywhere right of woke, you get banned straight up

This was my bad. I did exaggerate a bit. The issue does bring out the worst in me. I still stand by the spirit of my point though.

> what attitude or opinion crossed the line?

My understanding is that reddit mods are not genius propagandists. So, their concerns revolve around banning anyone who steps on a set of predefined land mines.

Past the shallow left good - right bad, there is an impression of India, Philippines, Brazil being run by 'strong-men ethno nationalists' who are all right-wing and bad. Any time that status quo is genuinely questioned, you step on a land mine. They particularly don't like the semantic lines between right & left being blurred.

A couple of other land mines are : ( I single out left triggers, because that's what this community cares about. The right is often guilty of similar or worse things, but they do it with a kind of brazen selfishness that it doesn't seem as hypocritical)

* how various far-left faces are pursuing the same 'american dream' they so heavily criticize.

* If you point out that research on medical transition during puberty is lacking and a lot of gender-affirming models of treatment based in shaky science.

* That a statistical majority of black people support increase in policing. A lot counter-intuitive statistical results among 'captive demographics' are triggers in general.

* Criticisms of Islam in general. I won't extend this to Hindus = evil, but I feel like there is a general dislike towards Hinduism as a result as well. However, it is possible I am just more tuned into it.

> substantive enough that someone could come and meaningfully disagree with you

That is exactly why I got banned. The polite and well-spoken ingroup contrarian (IGW) is a rather dangerous breed. (see another one of my comments in the same thread about IGWs)

> Anyway, thanks again.

Hey, I'm glad this went in such a productive direction. I'm glad HN exists and the coercive civility of the platform is truly wonderful.

Every sub reddit has its golden calf. If you're somewhat left leaning, you're going to end up in places that have leftist golden calfs.

If you're not brain-washed, you'll likely have some amount of critique of every single thing in the world including their golden calf.

So when people say: this is perfect and we're the good guys and they're the bad guys and look how stupid they are, you might say something nuanced or somewhat understanding and now you're a trump supporting, racist, misogynist, nazi incel.

Or, more likely, you'll get downvoted to oblivion and the only people who will comment will have some shit like that to say.

Personally, I've had plenty of reddit users actively tell me I'm a piece of shit for trying to understand what sort of psychological trauma it is that leads to people shooting up schools, or raping, or joining hate groups. Which "humanizes" them too much for most peoples tastes.

Basically: trying to understand "the enemy" or raise awareness about issues in "the plan" are totally off limit topics in most places.

I see a lot of examples of "I got banned over nothing!" that after examination it becomes clear they got banned over.. everything. If something fits that mold I get suspicious. Which is why I ask for counter-examples. Cause its never really nothing, right?

But I think I'm picking up what you're putting down. It just hasn't been my experience that moderation teams are that polarized, it has been my experience that people blame a polarized environment for their own poor behavior though.

Doesn’t this just mean you have the same ideological inflexibility these moderation teams do? I’m trying to understand what actual counterpoint you have made here.

I think we're just sharing perspectives, if you're looking for a hard line to draw between us you're gonna be confused.

> it has been my experience that people blame a polarized environment for their own poor behavior though

I've seen a lot of both, and I think you should be very, very worried about your perspective on this.

There is an overwhelming amount of uncomfortable truths which people are hostile towards. Especially when those people have a narrative; narratives almost always being ideologically over-simplified and therefor in conflict with reality.

If you want a really easy one, I recommend looking into the statistical "math" behind the 75/100 wage-gap. It still blows my mind that one is not allowed to point out super faulty math, and that many people still hold that number to be truth.

So, in this topic I have requested (and received) examples that were contrary to my expectations. I don't think theres anything wrong with my perspective.

> If your opinions are anywhere right of woke, you get banned straight up.

I hear this from people on the right, but there are plenty of right-wingers in there every time I visit.

Go into a thread about Afghanistan, and there will be people blaming biden arguing with people blaming trump.[1]

Go into a thread about Isreal and Palestine. People are arguing about which one is the true evil.[2]

Go into a thread about climate change. People are openly downplaying climate change.[3]

The subs I most often see suppressing speech are generally on the right, so it sounds a lot like projection when I hear people making these accusations.

[1] - https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/pbzuye/large_exp...

[2] - https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/nimqkg/tens_of_t...

[3] - https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/pbkpqt/atmospher...

I clicked on each of these and while there seem to be a few "right of woke" comments they are massively buried. It could be that most non-woke commenters have either already been banned or now avoid it. This doesn't disprove the original comment.

There are plenty of "right of woke" comments in there, but as far as proof, what would you like to see?

There are plenty of folks who haven't been banned, so clearly it's not everyone. Do you have records of all of the people who have been banned so we can directly test the assertion I'm responding to?

You make my case for me right here

Every example you give here is of intra-left debate within a tiny overton window. Opinions around palestine haven't yet crystallized, because WW2 wounds of the holocaust are still fresh. Similarly, Biden was the most hated of the democratic choices on the left. The far-left is still trying to squareoff between their opinion of biden vs hatred of trump vs hawkish liberal empire building vs mistreatment of afghans by Taliban. The opinions around these topics have still not concretized in the culture war. That being said, I certainly see the direction in which the winds are blowing.

__________

On the surface social propaganda dynamics function in a way that is wonderfully elaborated on this post : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20183001 (I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup)

However, under the surface, real propaganda emphasizes the an insidious ostracization of another community member : the in-group-contrarian. (IGC) (read more here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23596617)

Propaganda mods will often allow the stupidest of opinions on climate change and racism to stay on. In part, because the community does their job for them by heavily downvoting these opinions.

But, the IGC is far more dangerous. They start making too much sense (are usually thoughtful & polite), have a proven 'correct' identity (can't easily be dismissed with adhominems) and have some level of credibility (professional stature in the correct circles). Classic examples of IGCs would be black conservatives (Glenn Loury), Anti-woke academics (Jordan Peterson) or atheist ex-muslims (Ayaan Hirsi Ali). Don't read too much into the examples, I don't endorse or even totally agree with most of these people. (The fact that I feel a need to say this, shows the soft fear I have of being called an islamophobic transphobic trump-lover by association, despite aligning with none of those groups)

The IGCs are treated far far worse than any outgroup member. Classic gives are that they get called stupid, opportunist, sell-outs,self-help shills and the like. I have heard some vicious anti-semitic and racist stuff being thrown at IGCs by the left-woke establishment, to shut them down before they get too big. The fear of these people is palpable. I feel like I got insta-banned due to having the trappings of a prospective IGC.

If a member is too prominent at the time of them expressing an IGC opinion, then they get de-platformed (Bari Weiss, Matt Yglesias). The smartest IGCs know to sandwich their IGC view a ton of qualification, express IGC views as a way to point guns in the direction of common ideological enemy and express it sparsely enough to not aggravate too many people. (Contrapoints, John McWhorter). The most dangerous IGCs are those that cannot be deplatformed by a minority, whose ethical compass and merit cannot be dismissed, and are practically pillars of their community ( Total Biscuit RIP, Noam Chomsky, Scott Alexander, Chapelle, Paul G to a lesser degree). This last group is a total pain in the ass to deal with for propagandists.

> You make my case for me right here

You were specifically talking about bans and "hard-censorship". Now you've shifted to talking about downvotes.

I'm not going to try to hit a moving target.

You asserted that "If your opinions are anywhere right of woke, you get banned straight up."

I dispute this claim. Can you show me evidence supporting the claim?

Once we've covered that idea, then I'd be open to talking about whether a system of downvotes and upvotes suppresses the outgroup.

EDIT: If you're going to keep adding to your comment, you can't reasonably expect me to respond to it...

With regards to being an IGC, I can say you won't always get banned. In fact, usually it's the folks on the extreme end of the homogenous group that end up doing the enforcement and driving people out. Is it censorship, bullying, harassment, or is this the system working as intended? I guess that's what people have to decide.

One anecdotal example I have was from a Slack I was part of years ago. These two men who identified as "allies" went around trying to address what they called "micro-aggressions". At the time they were heavily focused on "gender neutral language". To them, this term was well-defined and solidified because in their group it undoubtedly was. The problem was, the wider community had not decided what "gender neutral language" meant to it. There were outstanding questions like, "Is dude okay?", "am I required to observe this massive list of alternative pronouns?" (at the time, pronouns were much more expansive than they are today). It fell short of low-hanging fruit like not assuming everyone is a man on the internet by default. These folks were pestering and ventured into their own system of micro and macro-aggressions. At one point I remember a Norwegian man was berated and micro-corrected for using the term "ladies". A full on lecture was dumped into a thread where he was trying to tell a story of his own. My chief observation in this specific incident was that not everyone agreed that "ladies" is dated language (including women). This caused people to join camps, the camps fought, and inevitably the primarily tech oriented (and progressive oriented) cultural homogeneity won out, driving out both the people they sought to defeat like actual misogynists but an overwhelming trove of normal people who just didn't agree with specific things. The thing I noted about cultural homogeneity at the time was that it inspires people to think in terms of camps, which makes good people odd bedfellows with bad people (and I mean that on both sides of this particular issue). To this day I do not view "ally" men as trustworthy by default.

In other groups I had been a part of similar things happened, but the folks seeking homogeneity attached themselves to Codes of Conduct or Guidelines that became highly prescriptive, and at times, exclusive. They'd seek to moderate one side of this debate but not the other, and with a quickness that was hard to match. They developed a lot of abstract language about systems and power, and ironically enough, used it to boost themselves into power.

I've since distanced myself from any group that has overly prescriptive COC's or has a history of them. What makes that interesting is that I'm not someone who opposes gender neutral language, but I disliked how they enforced it. They weren't positive change agents, and they made the assumption everyone who spoke up was an apologist or some more serious label. I hadn't seen these problems for a while, because I really only hang out on specific IRC networks or HN as a result, both of which have fairly reasonable guidelines that prevent a wide spectrum of abuse.

So are you saying "If your opinions are anywhere right of woke, you get banned straight up." is an incorrect statement?

The last comment tried to shift the goalposts from being "banned straight up" to being suppressed through voting. Now you're trying to shift to a sometimes ban... there's also talk about not banning the people on the extreme right or not banning the "idiots" so they make the right look bad.

Again, I'm not going to try to hit a moving target.

The rest of your comment looks like it's trying to push the conversation off topic.

I'm neither asking for anecdotes nor looking for a diatribe about your experience on Slack. A specific claim was made about censorship in a particular subreddit. I've heard that claim before, but never seen it substantiated in any way.

Can you substantiate the claim?

I'm asking because it sure looks like conservatives are just angry about being downvoted. That's a valid, but very different concern.

> So are you saying "If your opinions are anywhere right of woke, you get banned straight up." is an incorrect statement?

Yeah, uniform rules are rarely reality. I do think people right of woke get ostracized with fairly regular tempo, sometimes that's bans, sometimes that's through other means.

> The last comment tried to shift the goalposts from being "banned straight up" to being suppressed through voting. Now you're trying to shift to a sometimes ban... there's also talk about not banning the people on the extreme right or not banning the "idiots" so they make the right look bad.

It seems like you're expecting me to have much more concrete thoughts and feelings around this subject. I don't. I have my experiences, if you're willing to value them then great, if you're the kind of person that thinks anecdotes are useless then our discussion is over. I didn't sit around writing down all the details around everything I ever saw that rubbed me the wrong way over years (nearly a decade now) of internet based discourse. That's to say, I can provide you a lens to look through, I can't make you see anything you don't believe exists.

> I'm asking because it sure looks like conservatives are just angry about being downvoted. That's a valid, but very different concern.

I am not a conservative. I also think the two are problems likely in the same domain based on what I've read of other replies.

> I do think people right of woke get ostracized with fairly regular tempo, sometimes that's bans, sometimes that's through other means.

Again. I'm talking about one specific claim. You guys keep trying to move the goalposts.

Can you substantiate the claim?

> You guys keep trying to move the goalposts.

I don't have a "goal post" to even move. I came here to dump some insight into the overall problem the other user was describing.

Substantiate what claim? That right of woke users are always treated with a ban? No. I already said that doesn't happen, I also said I don't think the problem is that binary.

Anyway, you make having a conversation on the internet completely exhausting. Good luck figuring out whatever it is that you're trying to figure out.

> If your opinions are anywhere right of woke, you get banned straight up.

This is what I was disputing. That's the goalpost.

The conversation is exhausting because everyone wants to dance around this claim rather than simply addressing it directly. From my end it feels like pulling teeth.

I don't see evidence of the statement.

I don't see evidence that the the statement is applied inconsistently.

I don't see evidence of moderates being targeted with bans.

I don't even see evidence that bans are politically motivated in the first place.

I've seen this complaint a lot, but it never gets substantiated. It's just thrown out there like we should all automatically agree with it.

Well I don't automatically agree. Please forgive my single-mindedness on this topic, but I'd like to see something substantiating the claim being made.

Once we can agree whether this is happening, then maybe I'd be willing to move to a different conversation (like voting).

I'm sorry about that. My keyboard glitched out, so I posted half my comment at that point. Then continued writing it.

My bad. I appreciate you putting in effort to reply and find good sources to refute my claims.

>r/India

More than a year ago I was banned from both r/worldnews and r/India for a comment about how the US and Pakistan funded and armed the Mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

I'm a Danish guy and I have never posted anything in r/India. Someone who mods both r/worldnews and r/India doesn't like criticism of Pakistan.

Pakistani nationalists becoming mods of both r/India and r/worldnews is just the tip of the iceberg of what is wrong with the mods on reddit.

banned from both r/worldnews and r/India for a comment about how the US and Pakistan funded and armed the Mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Which is no secret, and is not disputed. There's even a movie, "Charlie Wilson's War", with Tom Hanks. "And then we blew the endgame."

In the future?

Mods of the major subreddits have been on payrolls for years. Its a topic that used to come up with regularity ~6 years ago. I would be absolutely shell-shocked if it wasn't commonplace now.

My thoughts as well, /r/worldnews is for a long while already an echo chamber dominated by one political perspective that, to use a courtroom analogy, act exclusively as prosecutors against populists, centrists and conservatives or they act as defense attorney's for those they already vote for, depending on the hot issues of the day.

The inability for users to police mods on reddit is becoming a serious problem in my opinion.

An additional problem is that most mods enable the rapid development of echo chambers through often well intentioned rules that become draconian when enforced by the right mod(s).

As long as people keep using reddit, nothing is a problem (for reddit).

How would users police mods? It's very easy to write a karma-farming bot, you would end up with bots controlling mods, not users.

You can add r/videos to that list. They suppress anything relevant. If 9/11 happened today you would not know going on r/videos. You have to go to r/publicfreakout which wouldn't even be the relevant subreddit but at least they don't censor reality even if there is a lot of astro turfing going on.

Since trump, most of the subreddits have been taken over, and the rest quarantined or removed.

>It's possible that in a few years all an authoritarian regime has to do to shut down bad publicity is to get a moderator on r/worldnews.

Too late.

After the Orlando nightclub massacre in 2016, /r/news and /r/worldnews completely shut down postings about it because a Muslim was the killer. /r/askreddit and, yes, /r/the_donald opened up discussion threads because there was no alternative on Reddit.

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