Reddit moderators need to be stopped
ashlan.com
ashlan.com
https://www.reddit.com/wiki/selfpromotion
And you're posting the complain on HN which also has a rule against it:
>Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff occasionally, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity.
> This page is no longer updated.
> For more up to date information go here: https://www.reddithelp.com
This is all I can find there:
https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043504051-Wh...
That would be about admin and not subreddit mods. The general problem with subreddit mods is they can do whatever they want and there's no possibility of accountability or ensuring the rules are applied fairly. Admin don't care what mods do unless it blows up on the news.
Mods have full discretion though, that's the gist of this entire thread. As someone with a 16 year old reddit account I've seen a lot of bad moderators though.
I don't know if the rule is still commonly an enforced rule on other parts of reddit though? I am sure there are redditors who don't know it though, based on /r/ruby.
(I post other people's stuff to /r/ruby, but I think this is maybe rare on /r/ruby? Once someone actually got mad at me for posting his article, like I was trying to steal the karma for the article he wrote, or posting it in a way or at a time that wasn't of his chosing and I should have let him post it himself as the author! He obviously did not know about this "rule"!)
Is it normal to get perma-banned from a subreddit on reddit, without first being warned once for violating a rule? (I know for a fact that does not happen on HN, people don't get their accounts banned without a single warning from dang, at least not for something like violating a self-promotion rule).
Generally, yes.
I prefer to use temporary bans myself but there are a lot of mods who use the permaban first and then gauge your reaction when you modmail to ask why you've been banned.
Also, tons of really bad mods on the site. No one disputes this.
What sort of a reaction do they want?
Mostly, this makes me glad I use reddit as little as I do.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ModerationMediation/comments/v7xhu5...
> Many subreddits start with a permaban just to test how the rule breaker responds. Are they reasonable, contrite, and willing to promise not to break the rules again? This can be a great filter as to whether or not the person should be allowed to participate in the future, or is most likely going to be a headache in the future.
> Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff occasionally, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity.
Are there more specific guidelines regarding this? This account is directly linked to my real name/identity, so I use it for posting comments that I'm okay with signing my identity to, and so far have only submitted content of my own creation. It seems that linking my true identity to publicizing something that someone else can change to say whatever they want, is a poor choice, so I have a separate anonymous account that I use to submit articles from the internet at large.
I don't think that what I'm doing is outside the intended spirit of the rule, but I may be wrong here and would love to know if so.
edit: I vouched the reply comment, don't know why it got flagged.
Edit: What the heck? I just explained the parallel, in response to a low-effort, uncurious comment that totally missed it, and I'm flagged? Sheesh.
Edit2: Thank you.
The only thing I'm gaining by volunteering to steer conversations on a subreddit is the loss of my free time.
I wasn't able to reply to your comment when it was flagged. bad moderation strikes again!
A couple of years ago someone contacted me in private, suggesting I might want to hand over the subreddit to them so they can "improve it". Looking into the user, they were a powermod already controlling a dozen other subreddits. They posted aggressively to all of them, often the same thing to multiple of these subreddits. There was a whole bunch of crypto promotion. I said okay, I'm willing to hand over the reins to someone better, but anyone can submit to a subreddit; you might at the very least want to actually become an active participant in the community first so I can see if you're serious; I can even make you a moderator to begin with.
Their response (paraphrased)? "This requires too much time and dedication for me to do it experimentally, without any guarantees that afterwards I won't be kicked out. Have a good life."
I think there's a major difference in perspective between powermods and, you know, regular subreddit mods. To me, a subreddit belongs to its community - which means whoever shows up to engage with it. It's a convenient structure for organizing content submitted by people with a shared interest. My job as a moderator is to keep it clean of content that infringes platform rules and to enforce the will of the community in ways that the voting system isn't suited for. This can mean doing very little, if the subreddit is small. But a powermod like this one seems to require absolute control. Subreddits must be "theirs", their project, before they will engage, and they see it as their responsability to "grow it", to actually provide the content if necessary. They think a lot about karma and metrics and partnerships. They seem to me like control freaks who really, really need more hobbies (no offense, guy from back then).
I retain my lone subreddit to this date not because I am in any way well suited to do so, but to protect it from being nabbed by people like this. I'm always mildly worried the powers that be will think I'm squatting, but I'm an active redditor in general and I'm happy to keep an eye on contributions - which can be made by anyone. Maybe one day a community member will show up who is truly passionate about the town and suited to take my place and do more... css stuff with it.
> It's not strictly forbidden to submit a link to a site that you own or otherwise benefit from in some way, but you should sort of consider yourself on thin ice. So please pay careful attention to the rest of these bullet points.
> If your contribution to reddit consists mostly of submitting links to a site(s) that you own or otherwise benefit from in some way, and additionally if you do not participate in discussion, or reply to peoples questions, regardless of how many upvotes your submissions get, you are a spammer. If over 10% of your submissions and conversation are your own site/content/affiliate links, you're almost certainly a spammer.
- https://old.reddit.com/wiki/faq#wiki_what_constitutes_spam.3...
I'm sorry they banned you instead of just telling you that and asking you to stop.
Looking at the /r/technology rules I don't see anything about submitting your own content (some subs have rules against this).
All that said I agree a total ban is uncalled for but Reddit moderation is a thankless job that makes you sift through a ton of shit (depending on the size of the sub you moderate), I understand knee-jerk bans/deletions. Unless you've done moderation on a decently sized sub you don't understand how much work mods do to keep subs "healthy", sometimes this leads to false positives which is unfortunate but most subs accept that downside to keep out the spam.
moderators have too much power overall and rely too much on auto-filtering algorithms otherwise. Spam is a problem I know, but part of moderating means actually going through submissions instead of just outsourcing it to a filtering system.
https://old.reddit.com/wiki/faq#wiki_what_constitutes_spam.3...
https://www.reddit.com/wiki/selfpromotion
On that background, mods of a subreddit that agree with those rules banning you is not terribly surprising: If we ignore 2 posts from 4 years ago all you've done is post and comment on content from your own site.
Let me start by saying I don't think your article was spam or an issue but I do want to refute this point.
I understand how that statement seems correct and that the "invisible hand of the hivemind' will solve all things. Unfortunately this is far from reality. Upvotes != Good content/On-topic content. A very extreme example would be something like porn. You might get quite a few upvotes for pornographic content that is semi-related (or not at all) to the subreddit in question, that doesn't mean it fits with what the subreddit moderators are trying to create/maintain.
People want to think that subreddits are democracies or the sum of the people who submit/vote on content, they are not, in a lot of ways they simply can't be. You have to have moderation if you want a good community (Nowhere is this seen better than here on HN, thanks dang), moderation takes time, energy, and skill. Because of this it's really up to the moderators what they want the subreddit to be.
Reddit is better thought of as a loose collective of fiefdoms where the moderator's word is law. You are at the whim of the moderators and different moderators/subs do a better or worse job at this. Unfortunately there doesn't appear to be a better system available to us (again, simple up/down votes and reports on their own cannot substitute for a moderator).
You don't fix a subreddit by adding more mods to the modlist.
Did you post the same article to multiple subreddits? Is a fair amount of your post history on reddit links to the same blog? Is your account new? Those would all be looked at when deciding to ban.
https://reddit.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/205192355-What-...
You on the other hand are posting a link in light of the self-promotion guideline
https://www.reddit.com/wiki/selfpromotion
I'd avoid big subreddits like /r/technology if I were you and just post in niche subs.
Oh. I was expecting more than someone getting banned from a default sub. Any large and generic sub is just going to be a garbage experience no matter what.
> Are Reddit moderators just banning people at will?
Yes. Moderators are the unabashed dictators of the subs they moderate. If you want a different approach, there's nothing stopping you (or anyone) from creating a different subreddit like /r/realtech or something. This approach has many many negatives as well as positives.
> Is Reddit not interested in blog posts about technology anymore?
I'm sure _somewhere_ on reddit is certainly interested, but any large/default sub is going to be a crapshoot at best.
I think reddit is really making itself obsolete these days and it's a good time to launch a new boards mega-site
It had comments and engagement, but the moderators took it down because it was considered `self promotion`
There's some clues here about how to go about submitting your own off-site stuff:
https://www.reddit.com/wiki/selfpromotion
I don't read r/technology but I checked it out and it looks like they're one of the subreddits that have rules in detail on old.reddit.com and tell people to go read there. The don't seem to have a rule against self-promotion, but there is a rule against linking to "social media" and I dunno if they would consider a personal blog to violate that rule.
I did wonder whether there were trackers or anything but I think OPs site looks pretty clean from what I bother to check (Privacy Badger, uBlock).
MI5's David Shayler gave an insight into what he was required to do which was write articles for newspapers before he fell out with them, this was pre-internet days. Using the media to control the population is a valid tool.
Asch Conformity Experiment explained. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyDDyT1lDhA
David Shayler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Shayler
The MI5 recruitment hook "Godot is not coming" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_Godot#Sexual
Kompromat is something the security services of many countries engage in, which gives you an insight into their blackmail techniques of business execs, politicians and anyone else who is outspoken. Its also why this stuff is not taught at school because the govt would lose control of outspoken people. You'll be surprised at the criminality in the state in general and democracy is that perfect tool to keep the idiots coming back to vote for moar!
Dissent should be encouraged and valued, not muzzled.
I remember when when google came out against task killers, and r/android was all fanboi'ing over google's stance. When people posted task killers worked to make the device responsive again, you couldnt even have a conversation because google is always right.
Real life vs Theory, reddit is mostly discussion on theory on what should/could be the best. But, not always, home lab stuff subs talk about real life situations and outcomes.
In all, reddit is rather toxic for a discussion, I miss the days of newsgroups.
Note that this is unrelated to the Reddit Content Policy. This policy refers to site-wide rules such as no hate speech or covid misinformation. Violations of content policy often are handled directly by Reddit admins (Reddit employees with red usernames) instead of subreddit moderators.
So it really sucks when the Reddit mods get out of control from time to time over what should just be simple situations able to be remedied with a simple 'sorry'.