Supreme Court allows Reddit mods to anonymously defend Section 230 | Hacker News Reader

Supreme Court allows Reddit mods to anonymously defend Section 230

arstechnica.com

230 pointstaubek310 comments

To be clear, from the article: "Reddit received special permission from the Supreme Court to include anonymous comments from Reddit mods in its brief."

This is not saying the court decided anything - it is just saying it is allowing commentary from mods to be submitted to the court, without knowing their identity.

Since the mods’ handles are known, isn’t this pseudonymous rather than anonymous?

If things go wrong and contempt of court charges need to be issued, will Reddit be subpoenaed for the mods identities?

>If things go wrong and contempt of court charges need to be issued, will Reddit be subpoenaed for the mods identities?

How, exactly, might things "go wrong" for folks contributing to an amicus curiae brief[0]?

While amicus briefs are common, they're just arguments for or against a particular issue in a particular case. They aren't testimony, they aren't sworn affadavits and they have no legal weight.

It's essentially writing an OpEd or posting a blog post, except it's filed with the court. No one is "testifying" (in fact, appeals don't have witnesses or evidence or anything of the sort, just a review of the proceedings of the trial court, plus any arguments the lawyers want to make) in an amicus brief and no one is held to any particular standard.

And so I ask again, what, exactly, could "go wrong" here?

[0] https://legaldictionary.net/amicus-brief/

The mods fill the brief with a diatribe involving unspeakable things.

.. how "wrong" are you imagining things might go? Why would contempt of court charges be issued? What is the process by which you arrived at this idea?

That matches what the title says

You don't need permission to submit an amicus brief any more: https://www.scotusblog.com/2022/12/court-drops-consent-requi...

That's true, but they did need special permission to leep the identities of the moderators anonymous:

This, Reddit’s spokesperson notes, is “a significant departure from normal Supreme Court procedure.” The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit defending online privacy, championed the court’s decision to allow moderators to contribute comments anonymously.

“We’re happy the Supreme Court recognized the First Amendment rights of Reddit moderators to speak to the court about their concerns,” EFF’s senior staff attorney, Sophia Cope, told Ars. “It is quite understandable why those individuals may be hesitant to identify themselves should they be subject to liability in the future for moderating others’ speech on Reddit.”

I'd note both the EFF and Reddit said this was unusual.

I think this is a catastrophy of American exceptionalism, really American narcissism. The idea that the provenance of ideas doesn't matter is insane to anyone who voted for Mr. Splashypants. How can you expect amicus briefs to the highest court in the land to become anything besides spam if they don't have attribution?

I think there's a difference between anonymous briefs and including information from anonymous people in yours.

Reddit mods are pseudonymous. You can't easily become one - especially for a major community - and they have reputations attached to them.

Perhaps, but then again maybe it's just really good PR.

Does that mean I can get a comment memorialized with the supreme court as a Reddit mod?

It's Ars Technica. If the headline wasn't misleading, they wouldn't publish it. They are among the worst publications to regularly show up on this site.

People always get upset over headlines. Maybe we should end headlines so people have to resort to reading the articles?

But then we live in a society that birthed Twitter.

It's not misleading, it is exactly what happened.

What about it is misleading?

There were some interesting observations on r/law, particularly this one: https://www.reddit.com/r/law/comments/10h9vju/supreme_court_...

From there:

>The issue has been muddied by sites like reddit who have been keen to play up outlandish possibilities of individual users or volunteer moderators becoming liable, which has never been a likely outcome of this case. The bigger and more realistic threat to a site like reddit is the possibility that actions taken by tools like automoderators, slur filters, or recommendation algorithms (e.g., sorting by "hot") might become legally analogous to editorial decisions.

>Because those tools are sometimes set up by moderators and influenced by user actions (e.g. voting/reporting), there are sort of fringe or edge-case scenarios where the lines could potential blur between algorithmic policies and user/moderator actions. But we as users don't really need to worry too much about every conceivable edge-case legal theory, because a site like reddit would presumably be incentivized to remove or disable any tools that could create such a liability, to protect Reddit's own self-interest.

>The algorithms that keep people clicking/viewing/refreshing the site are critical to the business interests of sites like Reddit and Youtube. It's really important for reddit's bottom line to have broad latitude to gamify user engagement by showing more of what will keep people on reddit longer and more-frequently. That's a less flattering PR angle than playing up the possibility that reddit users or mods could get in legal trouble.

>It's not so much that there is no possible way that any ramification of this case could ever put a user or a mod of a site like reddit in any jeopardy in any conceivable scenario...It's more like, sites like Reddit have a lot to lose if their algorithmic recommendations should become legally analogous to editorial decisions.

You know how the lawyers get upset when us engineers practice airchair lawyering? This is like the reverse of that.

Hot is not a recommendation algorithm -- everyone has the same hot list. It's literally just a sort of votes.

In fact, almost nothing reddit does is custom to the user. It's all based on votes and other user actions. The only thing custom is the recommended sort, which anyone can turn off, by choosing the other sorts.

Saying that reddit is algorithmic would be akin to saying that voting for President is an "algorithm" because it adds up user votes and is biased because the voters are biased.

This is the first time I’ve seen someone use the word “algorithm” to mean “custom to the user”. My algorithms professor would like a word.

> Saying that reddit is algorithmic would be akin to saying that voting for President is an "algorithm" because it adds up user votes and is biased because the voters are biased.

My algorithms professor certainly would have considered “call the winner of an election the person whose sum of votes is the highest after tallying all entries” an algorithm. There are, in fact, many other competing election algorithms amongst which first past the post is just one.

> This is the first time I’ve seen someone use the word “algorithm” to mean “custom to the user”. My algorithms professor would like a word.

You are both 10 years out of date with reality of this word use in this context.

Your algorithms professor would also call "sorting" an algorithm. But for the purposes of this conversation, "sorting by date" is not an algorithm.

What makes it not an algorithm for this conversation?

Sorting is an algorithm that organizes content. Auto-moderation is an algorithm that editorially curates content.

The conversation is about Section 230, which is ruling on whether companies can be held liable for editorial curation algorithms.

One question before the court, at least from the perspective of Reddit's brief, is whether voters whose input influences an editorial curation algorithm could be held liable and sued with enough merit to warrant a defense if Section 230 is removed.

@jedberg's point, at least in my reading, is that the r/law poster is equating the "hot" list with an editorial curation ("recommendation") algorithm, when the "hot" list is a content-neutral sorting algorithm.

Sorting is technically an algorithm, so saying "but sorting is an algorithm" is the best kind of correct. It's just not a very valuable correctness for this conversation.

This is an absurd distinction. Whether you a sort million posts by date, or by how likely a user is to be interested in them, you are curating in the same sense.

Are you seriously trying to assert reddit isn't OVERWHELMINGLY editorially curated.

Let's say it another way.

When people, tech news, non-tech people, say "The FACEBOOK algorithm" or the "TIKTOK" algorithm, they are talking about the opaque recommendation engine that works on each individual user based on the likes, preferences, viewed pages, and probably things like location, time spent looking at a random video, and a hundred other things.

It's about individual recommendations based on lots of datapoints vs. a more direct sorting based on global trending.

Algorithms bad.

It's always laughable when someone goes to defend something and fall flat on their face because they didn't think about it too hard.

It's not even reasonable that algorithm would ever imply personalized.

> Hot is not a recommendation algorithm -- everyone has the same hot list. It's literally just a sort of votes.

It doesn't have to be personal to be editorial. Newspapers, for example.

I can sort by "top" which gives me the most votes in the given time period. I can sort by "new" which gives me the posts in chronological order. I can also sort by "hot" which serves posts in an unknown way that reddit has decided means they are driving interaction.

To me, what makes "hot" different is that it's a trade secret. "hot" is the thing that other sites don't have. "hot" shows you posts that you're more likely to be interested in (as apposed to "new" or "top"), even if it's not personal, to drive engagement.

Hot is not a trade secret. How it works is public information. Here the code:

https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/l...

No that is how old Reddit worked before it went closed source and evolved into a social media app over the top site with comments it used to be

> Latest commit d990533 Aug 17, 2015

Unless you run your own instance of reddit how can you be sure that is what is used?

It’s definitely not what’s used anymore. Reddit went closed source and when they did so they gave one reason being their internal codebase had completely diverged and moved to micro services

My understanding is that Hot is basically voting velocity times total votes.

This is similar to "rising," which is essentially just voting velocity.

The only editorialized "secret sauce" algorithm reddit has is called "recommended."

> It doesn't have to be personal to be editorial. Newspapers, for example.

And in terms of the topic, this is the relevant framework to consider the question.

It's already established law that newspaper editors can be held liable for maliciously false reporting in their papers, even though the editor is not the originator of the words.

None of those show you what the powermods (in collusion with the admins) didn't deem fit for your consumption.

An algorithm is a recipe or formula. There is nothing about an algorithm that requires it to be custom to the user. Merriam-Webster[1] has it as:

   a procedure for solving a mathematical problem (as of finding the greatest common divisor) in a finite number of steps that frequently involves repetition of an operation
   broadly : a step-by-step procedure for solving a problem or accomplishing some end

"Hot" absolutely is a sorting algorithm. Whether or not you consider the top items in a sort to be recommended is a matter of opinion.

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/algorithm

    The only thing custom is the recommended sort, which anyone can turn off, by choosing the other sorts.

Reads as: "The only thing custom is the default algorithm."

What are the stats on the % of people using reddit actively who get something OTHER than "recommended" as their sort option?

Also, how do you square these ideas with the fact that there's an invisible thumb on the scale on votes, in terms of reddit's displayed vote count and the real vote count, the sheer number of bots on the site, and the fact that reddit chooses who gets to moderate subs (and in a few cases has actively replaced ownership of a sub)?

100% Everyone has the sort options 'best', 'hot', 'new', 'rising' (which I usually use), 'controversial' (sometimes interesting), and 'top'.

I don't know which of those is considered 'recommended', or why someone would think that is the only thing custom. Each user can choose what subs they subscribe to, and therefore customize what they see in their feeds.

What is the percent of users never getting there and just going to subreddits they are interested in directly ? I'd bet like 90%

> recommended

What’s that? New Reddit only?

It isn't just a sort on votes though, the algorithm takes into account post time and how fast it has gotten upvotes. If it was just sort by votes, we would've been looking at that "show do I uninstall the Skyrim mod 'schlongs of Skyrim'" on the front page for quite a lot time. So there is at least some nuance to it. (Not that I disagree with the gist of what you're saying though!)

There’s equality of opportunity and equality of outcome. Just because everyone is treated equally doesn’t mean that the end result isn’t biased. Truly: there is no such thing as apolitical technology.

I recommend MIT books Building Successful Online Communities. Also I’m reading the updated version of “Code” which has a bit about online communities I quote a lot:

Lessig (1999) identifies four elements that regulate behavior online: Laws, norms, markets, and technology

- Code/architecture – the physical or technical constraints on activities (e.g. locks on doors or firewalls on the Internet)

- Market – economic forces

- Law – explicit mandates that can be enforced by the government

- Norms – social conventions that one often feels compelled to follow

Regarding the case at hand. I think getting rid of 230 is a really dangerous idea. However I completely reject the “we have no sway over our users” argument and think we should hold online institutions socially (more) accountable for not doing more to encourage and promote high quality non-toxic communities.

> everyone has the same hot list

This has not been true for five years. https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/6j3dkw/testing_geo...

You’re confusing popular and hot. Hot is the same for everyone.

That applies to a single subreddit. It was true even before that change that your and my hot would look different because we subscribed to different subreddits.

> Hot is not a recommendation algorithm -- everyone has the same hot list. It's literally just a sort of votes.

Is that true? How do they decide when a post falls off the feed?

It's clearly a velocity calculation of some sort, but I'm sure it's been tweaked and changed over time. But how? What's the actual calculation? Does it vary by subreddit? If they published the calculation/algorithm, would it matter?

> automoderators, slur filters, or recommendation algorithms

These are nothing if not editorial decisions

FWIW - The supreme court generally will allow just about any amicus brief.

So this is not particularly special in that respect.

While I support upholding section 230 I find irony in reddit proclaiming their support for users and everyday citizens. The majority of the site is overrun by zealots and trolls who relentlessly punish any non-conformance woth their chosen orthodoxy. Their moderation rarely maintains communities but rather restricts discussion, dissent and freedom of expression.

This is like the Stazi proclaiming support for privacy laws.

A while back, somebody made a moderator graph, that showed what dozens and dozens of subreddits individual moderators moderated. You could see their "web".

It not only confirmed the leanings and behavior but undeniably so.

It is why "redditor" exists as an insulting term, but fb/twitter/etc don't have one. Not necessarily just the users, but the mods too.

> It is why "redditor" exists as an insulting term, but fb/twitter/etc don't have one. Not necessarily just the users, but the mods too.

It really is. If someone mentions using reddit irl I usually assume that they're bad news and steer clear

This was way worse during Covid , I know, even though before Covid it was already very bad. People were banned just for asking questions, merely for dissenting from the narrative, which was constantly changing, like about masks.

The issue that moderators face is the "what is the relative worth of this topic in this subreddit compared to the additional (personal) cost of moderating it?"

For many hot topic items no matter how innocuous or relevant to the subreddit, unless there is a large and active moderator team that can handle the fallout and apply appropriate anti-flame measures, the course that is easiest to take is "just delete it as soon as it starts."

The moderation tools are blunt. Remove and approve. Shadow bans aren't things that can be done easily by mods (possible, but takes a fair bit of manual curation and getting into the automod setup). Delayed visibility can't be done (I'd love to have a "any reply to a comment that has a significant number of votes in that post is delayed by 15 minutes").

If there's a post that is "this will take me 1 minute to delete now" or "this will take me 1 hour to clean up later" - that 1 minute to delete now will likely win every time.

Note that the alternative isn't "but you can just leave it up and users will behave" - it is "this sub will become unmoderated, full of spam, and eventually closed down." If the mod is at all interested in the topic, that's not a desirable state.

>While I support upholding section 230 I find irony in reddit proclaiming their support for users and everyday citizens. The majority of the site is overrun by zealots and trolls who relentlessly punish any non-conformance woth their chosen orthodoxy. Their moderation rarely maintains communities but rather restricts discussion, dissent and freedom of expression.

So what?

There's nothing in Section 230 or any other US law (this is a US case, so I'll focus there only) that makes being a "zealot" or a "troll" or "relentlessly punish[ing] any non-conformance woth[sic] their chosen orthodoxy" or "restrict[ing] discussion, dissent and freedom of expression" in a private actor's[0] forum a criminal act or (with the exception of defamation[1]) a civil tort.

Don't like what folks say or how they moderate? Ignore them. Or sue them (most likely a waste of time and money, but don't let that stop you).

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/17/18682099/supreme-court-ru...

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/defamation

If anything there are not enough trolls and devils advocates. It's a total hive mind. If opinion is split 40/60 on a contentious topic users only get to see the prominent opinions from the slight majority. The way the voting is displayed a sum total rather than up/down means users can't know how contentious something is. Facebook is the opposite where mostly controversial comments are shown. Both suck.

That's a bit of an overstatement, it varies heavily from subreddit to subreddit.

If you haven't already I recommend reading the text of section 230. It's very short and takes only a minute or two: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230

I don't think it should be repealed but its protections should only apply to users and content providers acting in good faith and best effort to proactively prevent harmful content. Revenge porn for a moderate example: not verifying the provenance if the content and validity of the submitter by the porn site or users who knowningly upvote or positively comment should not be protected. There needs to be an incentive beyond the goodwill of site owners and users. Look at twitter with elon changing policy with allowing harmful content but reducing its reach. He is able to do that due to this law.

"I upvoted wrong porn movie and I'm now in jail" is terrible dystopia you seem to want.

All site owner should be required is to follow the law here like disclose the uploader's data to the authorities if what they did is deemed illegal

> There needs to be an incentive beyond the goodwill of site owners and users.

The incentive is users wanting to use your site because it is not filled with shit.

Also "harmful content" is nowadays waaay to easily interpreted as "the thing I don't like".

Prosecutors would have to prove you upvoted knowing it was "the wrong porn".

> All site owner should be required is to follow the law here like disclose the uploader's data to the authorities if what they did is deemed illegal

And take it down? With that stipulation it is even more than what I said because best effort moderation is not neccesarily reporting to the government. Just bans and removal are best effort right? Once the content is taken down, I don't think there should be a reporting requirement unless a criminal law was broken.

> The incentive is users wanting to use your site because it is not filled with shit.

Are you kidding? Users will flock specifically for shit and pay for it too. I won't even mention any of them I am sure you must know this. Filth is actually very profitable. Well meaning site operators and users should be protected but for everyone else there needs to be a moderation incentive. If I bully you on HN for example, what is the incentive to ban me other than the goodwill of moderators? What if they prefer to have as many users as possible even if they can't reasonably review every flagged post? My suggestion is to provise that incentive so that moderation happens not just when it is convenient for the site operator. Moderation is why you are not liable to begin with.

> Also "harmful content" is nowadays waaay to easily interpreted as "the thing I don't like".

Not really, there are clear enough legal definition. Of course there is criminal law but in addition to that, whatever in state or federal law that is already defined as action or speech for which you can become liable, now the site owner also gets liable in addition to the original poster if and only if the site owner refuses to do moderation. So if "the thing I don't like" is something I can sue you for, I would need to win a suit against the original poster first and then sue the site owner for refusing to have moderation capabilities or not reviewing flagged posts and taking them down.

> Prosecutors would have to prove you upvoted knowing it was "the wrong porn".

Why you want to prosecute people clicking the arrow button on the website IN THE FIRST PLACE? That's some 1984 shit right here. Prosecution for unlawfully liking a picture, wtf is this shit ?

>> All site owner should be required is to follow the law here like disclose the uploader's data to the authorities if what they did is deemed illegal

>And take it down? With that stipulation it is even more than what I said because best effort moderation is not neccesarily reporting to the government. Just bans and removal are best effort right? Once the content is taken down, I don't think there should be a reporting requirement unless a criminal law was broken.

If it is illegal it should be taken down, if it is not it should not. Sharing sextape without consent of the partner is illegal AFAIK, offender gets reported and court/police orders site to take it down.

Moderation have NOTHING to do with it.

>> The incentive is users wanting to use your site because it is not filled with shit.

>Are you kidding? Users will flock specifically for shit and pay for it too. I

I should elaborate on that. "It is not filled with shit they don't like". Sites like reddit give user a good chance to find a space where there is a lot of stuff they like and that's why they're being popular.

There might be subreddit filled with everything you hate but you ain't getting it in suggestions by algorithm (as suggestions is not main front of reddit, unlike twitter/facebook) and you don't have to go there

> If I bully you on HN for example, what is the incentive to ban me other than the goodwill of moderators?

I mean... better written social media sites just have [Block] button where I can choose to not see given person's ramblings.

But giving user the power to choose what they do or do not want to see seems to be passe. Altho to be fair twitter does have some features around it. But people want to decide what other people don't want to see so would rather bother moderators with false positives than to just mute the person they disagree with.

It would actually be interesting to see stats on how many "bad because you were naughty" ends up in just that user creating new account, but that would be probably a very hard stat to get.

> My suggestion is to provise that incentive so that moderation happens not just when it is convenient for the site operator.

Your suggestion is giving moderators so much work the site would be unprofitable. How on earth you'd "verify the provenance" of a meme subreddit? Or you want moderators to google image search every image posted ?

And moderation is always convenient for site operator, especially if they don't pay for it.

"Curation" is the bigger problem; moderation is by definition weeding out the bad and steering the discussion into, well, discussion instead of shouting match.

But fucking with recommendations to show whatever your corporate interest aligns with, recent examples being japanese twitter being filled by anime and mechs instead of polarizing politics after musk fired their content team

> Moderation is why you are not liable to begin with.

You are liable for shit you say on internet, moderation or not. This law was about moderators and site owners not being liable for stuff users put on them, not users themselves

>> Also "harmful content" is nowadays waaay to easily interpreted as "the thing I don't like".

>Not really, there are clear enough legal definition. Of course there is criminal law but in addition to that, whatever in state or federal law that is already defined as action or speech for which you can become liable, now the site owner also gets liable in addition to the original poster if and only if the site owner refuses to do moderation. So if "the thing I don't like" is something I can sue you for, I would need to win a suit against the original poster first and then sue the site owner for refusing to have moderation capabilities or not reviewing flagged posts and taking them down.

If only take downs were for actual legal cases we'd be in much better place. What social sites define "harmful content" and what law does is vastly different, like the recent disaster with vaccine communication.

* [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/olliebarder/2022/11/14/japanese...

> better written social media sites just have [Block] button where I can choose to not see given person's ramblings.

Or I could sue you for your ramblings. Also, blocking means I don't see the content, others seeing the content is harmful in way of slander or illegal porn,etc....

> If it is illegal it should be taken down, if it is not it should not. Sharing sextape without consent of the partner is illegal AFAIK, offender gets reported and court/police orders site to take it down. > Moderation have NOTHING to do with it.

Moderation has everything to do with it. If you don't take down after knowing it is illegal you should become criminally liable and where the law allows also civilly liable.

> This law was about moderators and site owners not being liable for stuff users put on them, not users themselves

Exactly but when they knowingly refuse to take down content they know is considered illegal or civilly damaging they should be held accountable.

> There might be subreddit filled with everything you hate but you ain't getting it in suggestions by algorithm (as suggestions is not main front of reddit, unlike twitter/facebook) and you don't have to go there

See above. Me being bothered has nothing to do with it. If you slander me promote content that is in anyway damaging to me I will sue you and complain to moderators. If mods refuse to take action then let the court decide if they should be held co-conspirators. There are so many types of such damages but an extreme example that is pushing for repeal of 230 is cp or revenge porn. Would you tell someone to block users that post naked pictures of them or their child? If they ask a subreddit and reddit admins to take it down and they don't comply then both reddit execs and mods should be held criminally and civilly liable.

> Your suggestion is giving moderators so much work the site would be unprofitable. How on earth you'd "verify the provenance" of a meme subreddit? Or you want moderators to google image search every image posted ?

They should limit members to a volume of managable daily flagged posts they can review. I never said meme provenance that comment was specifically about porn. You are grasping at straws here. But if someone made a meme that is damaging to me, I should be able to sue mods and site operators when they refuse to take it down even after I flagged and reported the harm being done to me. Since their refusal to moderate is an explicit decision and the damage inflicted is well known to them (by my flag/report). I don't care if a bunch of subreddits die off I care more about actual harm to people being reduced.

> And moderation is always convenient for site operator, especially if they don't pay for it.

Again with this shit. Have you never heard of stormwatch, kiwifarms,4chan and 8chan? How is moderation profitable for them or for random porn sites? Even with reddit, engagement is profitable not moderation. Most of reddit is porn, is it profitable for them to moderate that? Users don't care who else gets hurt so long as it isn't them or their "group".

> If only take downs were for actual legal cases we'd be in much better place. What social sites define "harmful content" and what law does is vastly different, like the recent disaster with vaccine communication.

I only care about what the law has already defined as harmful. In a way it would give them guidance so they won't have to be arbiters of what is harmful. Is calling someone a racial epithet illegal? No, but You can get sued for defamation and "emotional distress" or whatever depending on the state so they can now use that as a guidance instead. But they can still moderate on their own terms in addition to the law if they choose to do so just not in ignorance of it.

> Why you want to prosecute people clicking the arrow button on the website IN THE FIRST PLACE? That's some 1984 shit right here. Prosecution for unlawfully liking a picture, wtf is this shit ?

Alright, how about a stipulation that your like generated some material gain to the site or original poster? Because stuff like materially supporting a terrorist for example is illegal so if a terrorist posts white supremacist violence or jihadist content people who upvote that get prosecuted for materially supporting a terrorist for even a cent of ad profits.

Then you think that Section 230 should be repealed. The whole goddamned point is to not have a chilling effect for moderation.

If you are not putting in best effort to moderate harmful (not merely undesirable but someone is being harmed) content then by all means chill away. Key word is best effort with the resources you have. So a one guy operated forum has to restrict user registration to a volume that person can manage. Moderation is the way you avoid liability. Spam or dmca would be out of scope for example and a flag button is sufficient for reporting harmful content.

The driver in a robbery-murder gets charged equally with murder because he was part of a criminal act knowingly. Merely facilitating content delivery is being the driver,so the moment you know a crime is being committed or someone harmed you have a choice to stop participating and report the offense or keep doing what you are doing and become a co-conspirator.

Capitalism enforces moderation even if American law does not. Reddit knows that advertisers don't want to be associated with racism or hate crimes.

That's not true and misleading. Capitalism promotes removal of unprofitable content. If your audience is the general public moderation will fit that, if it is people who are into something undesriable and unpopular it will follow suit.

A person can be harmed and that harm can be popular and profitable even for sites like reddit or HN even. The law protects the one innocent or wronged person first before the masses.

For example, it may be popular and I will agree with saying "the only good nazi is a dead nazi" however in the eyes of the law, if Nazis felt actual threat and suffered trauma let them sue me in court and if HN did not take down my content after it was flagged (no obligation to proactively monitor) then YC gets sued also.

There is a nice real place between utopia and dystopia.

Who gets to decide what is "harmful" content? I don't see that term anywhere in the US Constitution.

This is civil law, it is defined in existing laws. If I can sue the content originator on their own then that has already been decided as harmful by the law. The constitution does not contain all laws.

How does the law decide words are harmful...

Advertising networks.

I'm apparently out of the loop enough to understand all the words in the article but still have no idea what it's talking about. From context, I'm getting that it's something to do with volunteering and needing anonymity and immunity for when you then accidentally allow terrorists recruit followers? And there already exists law number 230 for this but the lawsuit tries to get it declared invalid? Can someone share maybe a short comment on what actually is going on here?

Ostensibly, the issue presented is this:

> Whether Section 230(c)(1) of the Communications Decency Act immunizes interactive computer services when they make targeted recommendations of information provided by another information content provider, or only limits the liability of interactive computer services when they engage in traditional editorial functions (such as deciding whether to display or withdraw) with regard to such information.

The background is that the families of a victim of a terrorist attack are suing Google for hosting an ISIS recruitment video on Youtube, for which Google has clear and undisputed immunity because of §230, and the plaintiffs are trying to find any argument they can stand on to make the suit stick (they've lost at all lower levels of the court).

What I quoted above was the explicit question presented to SCOTUS, but from reading some of the actual briefs, there's almost no discussion of this actual question, with everyone instead wanting to discuss §230 as a whole and not its narrow application to recommendation content.

Of the briefs I did skim, I liked the US solicitor general's position the best: recommendations are not protected by §230, but it's not enough to say that recommendation engine produced objectionable content, since the content itself is protected. Essentially, the recommendation would have to be in some way unreasonable, and the burden of that unreasonability is presumably on the plaintiff's part, and these plaintiffs are clearly unable or unwilling to properly make those allegations.

here https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/10h2fz7/reddits_def...

I'm concerned about the US Supreme Court's ability to handle a subtle, technical issue tied to new media. They need to take into account all the stakeholders, rights, law, and the dynamics of social media, and come up with an innovative solution that meets all needs fairly and clearly.

I wonder how many there even use social media, and I'm especially concerned that the Court is now oriented toward, and many members selected for, partisanship. They are there to find partisan advantage in rulings, not to be legal geniuses with deep commitment and knowledge of justice and fairness, with deep judicial temperment - there are not there as Solomons. That puts them at a loss for complex issues, expecially unfamiliar ones, though I'm sure they will find a partisan angle.

Whatever your politics: The reactionary conservative movement, with its campaign to politicize everything (now working on the FBI and Department of Justice, for example), has permanently degraded the country; we won't have these institutions back for generations. People don't want to face the loss, but it's already happened and continues to worsen before our eyes.

EDIT: People who support politicization (or corruption or disinformation or other damaging behavior) argue to normalize it - it's always that way, everyone does it, it's unavoidable, it's 'human nature'. I have warmongers now telling me that it's inevitable human nature. But that's not the case; we can have meaningfully less or more partisanship (especially in courts), corruption, disinformation, and warfare. I can see it with my own eyes now; I was here before 2016, and I know about other places and times and people. It's a bunch of nonsense and everybody knows it.

We control our fate, through knowledge and reason, through a collective commitment to good. Our predecessors did it, without the institutions and mechanisms and knowledge they bequeathed to us. With our inheritance couldn't have it easier; what are we bequeathing to the next generation? Despair? Corruption and war? What a shame that would be, with all we were given.

Please don't take HN threads on generic political/ideological tangents. It's not what this site is for, it's repetitive, and it invariably turns nasty.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

Our court system routinely handles far more technical issues than online publishing. Like every modern country, we regulate everything from water reclamation to aviation.

I'm talking about SCOTUS. Can you give examples there? Trial (district) and circuit appealate courts are different - though they also have been politicized to degrees.

Regulation is handled in the executive branch. Just because we regulate it, or it's tried in court, doesn't mean it's done well. That's the issue.

> Can you give examples there?

Most of the SCOTUS docket, the stuff which never makes headlines, is eye-wateringly boring dives into random technical matters.

The Google/Oracle lawsuit was far more technical than this https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/18-956_d18f.pdf and was just settled a little over a year ago

Isn’t regulation (mostly) handled by the legislative branch and enforcement handled by the respective department (sometimes executive)?

Unfortunately (and that is another Area where the Supreme Court should start striking regulations down) the legislative branch often passes open ended ambiguous laws directing an agency to accomplish a open ended ambiguous "goal" or "directive" instead of passing actual specific laws. These are then "interpreted" by the agency into regulations. Which is why for example the ATF (excuse me BATFE today) can just redefine what is a "machine gun" under every administration making entire classes of products illegal or not on the whim of who ever runs that agency (or is president).

This should be plainly unconstitutional as the legislative branch is not empowered by the constitution to delegate its power to the executive. legislative branch makes the laws and executive enforces the law. However in the US Today, the executive is both making and enforcing the law. That is not how it should be nor is it tenable for a free society to function

The DEA is another organization that is infamous for doing this. Or rather infamous for being handed such broad decision making authority. Like ATF though, it’s by design - it allows politicians to continue to make unpopular decisions without having to be held accountable for it.

> This should be plainly unconstitutional as the legislative branch is not empowered by the constitution to delegate its power to the executive

this is a fringe theory not agreed to by serious people, and used in a bad faith way by people who want to just dismantle the administrative state. The only logical conclusion from that thought process is no regulatory body can exist.

Though the "big tent" about regulations being mishandled by SCOTUS is that SCOTUS will often just throw out plain text interpretation of statutes and regulations when it doesn't satisfy the majority's overall goals.

>>and used in a bad faith way by people who want to just dismantle the administrative stat

It not in bad faith. I absolutely / 100% have the desire to dismantle the administrative state, it should not exists at all.

Anyone that claims to support "democracy" should also want to dismantle the administrative state as there is nothing less democratic than a bunch of unelected bureaucrats with the power to rewrite laws, and ruin peoples lives / businesses

Basically every action taken by the executive, if only through the realities of selective enforcement, leads to decisions being made by "unelected bureaucrats". Unless we start voting for every cop, prosecutor, auditor, city planning official, the domain experts they bring on, etc.

If you agree that delegation at some level makes sense, then we're talking about degrees of delegation being considered reasonable. But outright ruling out any form of executive delegation seems kind of hard? Your argument would apply to every level of the state after all, including your city council.

>>Your argument would apply to every level of the state after all, including your city council.

That would depend on the State Constitution, and the powers it gives state governments, and the power those state governments then give the cities they authorized under their state laws

That is the beauty federalism, what applies to the Federal Government does not have to Apply to State Governments.

West Virginia v EPA begs to differ.

Yes I think SCOTUS is acting in bad faith. I do not believe this to be a radical point of view in this day and age. There is some navel gazing about how SCOTUS is the final say here so what they say "is right", in some sense, of course.

It isn't delegating its power, it's leaving the implementation to the executive branch because it doesn't know how to implement its goals.

If the legislative branch was able to do this on its own, it would, but that would be a massive amount of work that they don't want and would do poorly if they tried.

no, it allows politicians to continue to make unpopular decisions without having to be held accountable for it by the voters.

"It is not us, it is that crazy FBI/DEA/EPA/ATF/CIA/NSA/<Insert Agency here>, if you elect us we will put a stop to them"

and they never do

No. In most areas the legislative branch has delegated their authority to the executive branch, and appointed bureaucrats write the regulations. This is a problem due to lack of accountability. I hope that the Supreme Court will eventually eviscerate the authority of the executive branch to write regulations. If something needs to be regulated then Congress ought to pass a specific law about it, not pass the buck.

How could Congress possibly keep up with all the issues affecting the country? Congress is a serial machine - it can pass < 1 bill at a time. Executive branch agencies are parallel machines.

There is no need for Congress to keep up with all the issues affecting the country. They should only legislate on issues where they have legitimate Constitutional authority without stretching the intended meaning of the commerce clause. Everything else can be left to the several states, or simply not regulated at all.

In particular I hope the Supreme Court will eventually reverse the precedents established in Gonzales v. Raich (2005), United States v. Darby (1941), and United States v. South-Eastern Underwriters (1944). That would essentially destroy much of the federal government as we know it today, and good riddance.

There are orders of magnitude too many decisions and too much analysis for Congress, whose bandwidth is < 1 bill simultaneously. If you think regulators move slowly now ...

Congress delegates it to technical experts, who are appointed by an elected official (the President). Congress can always change the law if they are unhappy; they have the ulimate power.

Those departments are largely executive agencies. The executive branch is supposed to enforce but over time it began to do both. The court is pulling this back now.

I’m not sure why I’m getting downvoted here. This is a pretty factual statement.

The environmental protection agency, for example, is an executive agency:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Environmental_...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_agencies_of_the_...

You're ignoring half your own statement?

Which part? That the executive branch is only supposed to enforce but over time has begun to legislate as well?

Or the part about the Supreme Court ruling that executive agencies are acting beyond their scope?

> I'm concerned about the US Supreme Court's ability to handle a subtle, technical issue tied to new media. They need to take into account all the stakeholders, rights, law, and the dynamics of social media, and come up with an innovative solution that meets all needs fairly and clearly.

Nope. That's what legislators do.

The Supreme Court's job is to decide whether safe harbor in Section 230 applies to companies when they are exercising editorial control.

What do you mean that it is now oriented towards partisanship? This has been true for at least a century. The recent Dobbs decision is as much the result of partisan efforts to institute policy opposed by the majority of the country as the original Roe decision was.

The court has handled complex technical issues many times before. This, along with partisanship, is nothing new.

Didn’t Dobbs return the decision to the states? Isn’t having the decision decided by majority vote the least partisan thing you can do by definition?

If they had truly taken a partisan stance, they would have unilaterally decided to ban abortion based on specious reasoning not unlike Roe.

> Isn’t having the decision decided by majority vote the least partisan thing you can do by definition?

If one party believes something to be an individual right and another party believes it to be a matter for collective/state decision, then no.

(Not that the Democratic party fully sees abortion as an individual right of the mother - after all, the Roe v. Wade decision did not really consider it as such, nor did it legitimize abortion throughout the pregnancy term; and the Democratic party generally supports Roe v. Wade. It has also not tried to put the matter into federal legislation for the 40-odd years between Roe and Dobbs.)

The decision was (more or less) up to individuals before. A state decision is inherently more partisan.

I think the person was referring to decision on the legality of abortion, not the decision of having an abortion. Instead of forcing the legality at the federal level it is now at the state level.

That would be true if States wouldn't overreach themselves and make it illegal for people to seek abortion in another State or prosecute its citizens.

It doesn't take a genius to forsee a standoff between Red and Blue.

States do this with all sorts of other laws. Look at the tax code in states for example. This isn't really unique.

I don't think that most people would agree that anarcholibertarianism (the system which allocates least decisions to state) is the least "partisan" option. That's not what people understand by partisanship.

> Isn’t having the decision decided by majority vote the least partisan thing you can do by definition?

Partisanship is not defined by "rightness" or "closeness to some notion of democracy", it's about closeness to a party line. Overturning Roe was a target of the Republican Party. They did it.

After Dobbs the US is more like the EU.

I feel like a large part of the US population wants to go back to the Articles of Confederation, which were so ineffective as a system of government that they had to be replaced after 12 years.

Americans hatred for their own government is legendary and somewhat bizarre.

It reminds me of the famous clip in Monthy Python: "what have the Romans ever done for us".

Understand that the United States of America arose out of resentment for British governance and thus governance in general. Our literal essence is to distrust and hate all governments.

The US federal and state governments exist strictly at the pleasure of the people and it's written in our Declaration of Independence that we can and will get rid of them all at a moment's notice if they stop enjoying the people's pleasure.

That the Articles of Confederation got canned was a demonstration of the people's power to get rid of government that failed to garner pleasure.

Stuff like our Bill of Rights exist because, yes, we fucking distrust and hate our government so much we felt a need to codify our resentment.

Which states actually feature majority vote = majority representation?

I think we all know very well the partisanship involved, despite the theoretical questions (which might be interesting in another context).

Majority rule is the most partisan thing.

> The recent Dobbs decision is as much the result of partisan efforts to institute policy opposed by the majority of the country as the original Roe decision was.

It's not just one decision, but would you provide support for that claim? Dobbs was decided by conservatives put on the court specifically to make that decision, which they executed promptly, along with other conservative priorities. Roe was decided by conservatives also, and they weren't put on the court to rule on abortion.

> Roe was decided by conservatives

Roe was decided by the Burger court, which, according to Wikipedia, "is generally considered to be the last liberal court to date". It was heavily based on a Griswold v. Connecticut precedent by the Warren court, generally agreed to be the most liberal Supreme Court in US history. Both of these verdicts were and continue to be widely criticized by conservatives as being based on extremely dubious reasoning. I don't know what made you think that Roe was "decided by conservatives".

There is a lot historical revisionism involved around these issues, with many people making blatantly false claims, either lying, or being themselves mistaken. The result is that people who have not lived through it, or who have not studied the history diligently, are very much misled as to the facts, because the media, which is very good and active at correcting lies and falsehoods spread by conservatives, takes approximately zero efforts to correct falsehoods spread by liberals (often it in fact acts with clear intent of spreading misapprehensions, by selective reporting and careful omission of facts).

"last liberal court" -- it remains the case that 6 of the 9 justices on the court that decided Roe were put there by Republican Presidents.

That's not a lock that they were in fact "conservative," but four of them were put on the court by Nixon, and regarding Blackmun, "The Justice Department including future Chief Justice William Rehnquist investigated Fortas at the behest of President Richard Nixon who saw the idea of removing Fortas as a chance to move the Court in a more conservative direction, and Attorney General John N. Mitchell pressured Fortas into resigning." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abe_Fortas

So four were appointed by Nixon, who specifically had in mind moving the court to a more conservative stance. The fact that he failed miserably with Blackmun notwithstanding, the only thing that can honestly be said of the court at the time is that it was less conservative than courts that followed, not that it was liberal.

> So four were appointed by Nixon, who specifically had in mind moving the court to a more conservative stance.

Did he? Whether or not that was his intent is unclear

It's literally quoted from wikipedia, which I linked, which cites https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Rehnquist_Choice/zk...

So yeah, seems pretty clear that he did.

> Both of these verdicts were and continue to be widely criticized by conservatives as being based on extremely dubious reasoning.

Roe is criticized by liberals as well. I didn't realize how much of a stretch that decision was until it became front and center. I remain in favor of a codified Roe and, given how flimsy that ruling was and that they had plenty of chances to do so, I blame Democrats entirely for not doing so before this ruling. Especially given that it would generally be nationally popular to do so.

The cynic in me sees how popular Roe style abortion rules would be nationally and how much it was used as a fundraiser and wonders if Democrats simply didn't want to kill the golden goose.

At no point have Democrats had the ability to legalise abortion with members like Manchin in the party.

And the idea they wouldn't do it anyway for fund-raising reasons is a disgraceful claim to make.

"And the idea they wouldn't do it anyway for fund-raising reasons is a disgraceful claim to make."

We are talking about modern politicians, aren't we?

Congres is incapable of doing it's job so the Supreme Court has to do it.

I have read about America in the 1850s and there are some unsettling parallels.

> At no point have Democrats had the ability to legalise abortion with members like Manchin in the party.

2008.

I know it's much less convenient, but can we stop referring to the Republican party as "conservatives" ? In this case they reversed a precedent that had been in place for two generations, with a justification firmly rooted in collectivism.

How would you prefer the Republican Party be referred to as?

"Republicans" or "Republican Party" works - we don't need a synonym. If we really want to talk about views independent of the party, then let's characterize each view individually rather than as a group.

What doesn't make sense is taking a group of positions that were conservative in the 70's, carrying them into the current day after society has changed significantly, and then talking about them as if they still represent a slowing of change rather than a radical departure.

Today everyone has instant access to virtually all human knowledge at all times in the palms of their hands yet somehow we are less informed and more susceptible to obvious propaganda than prior generations.

Pretending that the court only became politicized in 2016 is the most naive retconning I’ve seen on HN.

The progressive movement intentionally politicized the court in the 1960s against the strong warnings of the most ardent conservative the court has ever had. They went on to have a heyday of progressive wins. Now it’s the time for the conservatives’ revenge.

Speaking of other institutions that were politicized pre-2016… Obama deputized the IRS against conservative orgs and then had his lackeys destroy the evidence (failed hdds anyone). He used the FBI like his personal police force to go after his strongest political enemies. Pretending for a second that it’s the conservatives who are politicizing anything is just pure alternative history, aka fiction.

> They went on to have a heyday of progressive wins. Now it’s the time for the conservatives’ revenge.

I guess that's back to bans on interracial marriage then? (Loving v Virginia 1971)

It's certainly .. unfortunate that a lot of America's freedoms for all its citizens have been achieved against the wishes of a lot of its citizens and had to be done through the courts rather than the seriously dysfunctional legislature.

>The reactionary conservative movement, with its campaign to politicize everything

I'm sorry but which movement came up with the slogan 'the personal is political'?

Which one has entire academic departments dedicated to 'problematizing' everything from the skin color of LOTR orcs to dog walking?

RFC 2119 agrees [1] as does US law [2] with exception of Illinois apparently. Seems to be ill defined and not preferred in the UK, sometimes deemed inappropriate [3]. Perhaps the UK will interpret as per RFC-6919 [4] instead.

1. MUST This word, or the terms "REQUIRED" or "SHALL", mean that the definition is an absolute requirement of the specification.

[1] - https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2119

[2] - https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/shall

[3] - https://www.law-office.co.uk/art_shall-1.htm

[4] - https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6919

"The issue of recommendations arises in this case because the complaint alleges the defendants were recommending ISIS terrorist recruiting videos, which under certain circumstances could give rise to liability under the Anti-Terrorist Act,"

It seems to me there is an issue with the notion of “recommendation” here. There needs to be a difference between an intent to promote specific content, vs. a content-agnostic algorithm that just lists what “other users who liked what you liked also liked”. If (say) some Reddit moderators promote terrorist content, they should certainly be liable (or the editorial rules that require them to do so, if any). But when Reddit or YouTube shows you stuff based purely on statistical correlations of what you and other users viewed/liked in the past, then that mechanism in itself shouldn’t be an issue.

This doesn’t make any sense at all to me. If the video itself is a problem, it shouldn’t matter if it was recommended by a human with human intents or by an algorithm designed with capitalistic intent.

It would be hard to convince me that the intent of the system that recommended the video should be heavily considered. At least in the US we have a highly consequentialist legal system.

IMO the question of whether some content should be allowed to be available at all is orthogonal to the question of liability for “recommending”. I was only addressing the latter.

I highly doubt if this specific court will make decisions based on what’s good for users or society. They are dead set on philosophy that if it is really that important for users or society than lawmakers should be enacting laws as opposed to Supreme Court sneaking in the protections. So, these people are pursuing wrong line of argument and likely fail. They should instead be pursuing rigorous argument that original intent of Section 230 was to provide the protection they are asking for.

I feel that if you are going to brief the Supreme Court, you ought to come out of the shadows. But ok, let's let that pass. Perhaps the more intriguing issue with Reddit mods is that the really far reaching subreddits are controlled by so few people, and that moderation control is essentially for sale. See this old thread from HN

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23173018

It seems to me then that Reddit would strongly prefer not to pierce the veil of anonymity behind moderation because it will lead to some very uncomfortable questions for a business that has a perennial hope of IPO-ing in 2023.

So, reddit supports reddit mods, that offer free, uncompensated labor for subreddit communities.

And no one questions that, or how subreddits can skew opinion or possible conflict of interest with some mods directly referring or supporting paid content while masquarading as if they aren't related to the product.

Or, mods that dictate art isn't art, or that an artist didn't create something.

As much as I do enjoy how the Internet flourished because of 230, I don't enjoy how there is no transparency in someone who can shape content of an online community, especially forwarding their own opinions/thoughts or have their own agenda.

I don't see how the above issue of Reddit mods conflict of interests is not a 230 issue.

There are some great Reddit mods, but there are also some truly awful ones and the corporation does not have a proper arbitration process for managing things.

Example fictional scenario, but entirely plausible as variations of this do play out, on a computing sub you could write "I like Windows" and the Apple Mac-loving Reddit mod could immediately ban you. No rules were broken, you just expressed a contrary opinion to theirs and that is it. So if you wish to continue participating in that sub, you would need to generate and use an alt account.

Reddit threatens that having more than 1 account is against policy. Ignore this. You are the product on a free platform that generates corporate revenue through ads and selling digital awards, etc. If you do not engage with the platform by putting up posts and writing comments, there is less incentive for others to come visit as well, and ad impressions will diminish, revenue will diminish, etc. They will not actively seek out preventing access to the site if you are not breaking any laws or upsetting users. Do not get invested in accounts, were you to die tomorrow, nobody at all would remember you or care about anything you wrote there.

It is negligent on the part of Reddit to not have a proper arbitration process to grieve improper content moderation on the part of mods.

So yes, Reddit absolutely does take an active and direct hand in promoting the visibility of anything on the platform and should not be exempt from section 230. I am active in a sub that every day sees a lot of posts that I find interesting deleted by the mods. They are just curating. Sometimes things are deleted for the dumbest of reasons. Corporate interests come into play too. I remember the other month when Kanye said that Kim Kardashian and CP3 got together while both were married, the NBA Reddit mods for over 24 hours were ACTIVELY deleting every single post mentioning or linking to that. It was certainly basketball news, it was certainly salacious. Why was this happening? Good question! Was the suppression due to receiving an order from the NBA? Was it under orders from Reddit Corporate? Was it just simply a group of Reddit mods working overnight in a coffee shop deleting posts? It was far too targeted and for too long a time period to not be an active attempt at speech suppression until it was already out on too many other news sites, at which time an "approved" site like TMZ would be allowed through where they could presumably get ad-click impressions from diminished traffic to their story about it. They should tell the Supreme Court who gave the orders to suppress the Kanye story on a sub with 6 million+ subscribed accounts. You see this news-story preferences on other subs too, where some sites seemingly often have their links given preferential treatment, and others do not get to come through. Why? Is there a kickback? I don't know, but stories coming through are worth money as traffic is directed.

I love old Reddit, but I despise how it was set up to have little anonymous dictators for life seemingly entrenched forever in their little fiefdoms. No elections, no votes, no recourse other than having more than 1 account.

If Reddit is serious about wanting exemption from section 230, then if they want to be a social commons with community moderation they need to implement an arbitration process OR allow users to hold elections on which mods they want to represent them for fixed terms.

Dictators-for-life from anonymous mods (who also have alt accounts and are probably Reddit employees on the largest subs) is not it.

The anonymous mods giving Supreme Court testimony should state whether or not they are now, or have ever been an employee of Reddit or its investors or associated companies.

I don't know anything about /r/nba but from observations of other subs it seems just as likely that a few mods had a private discussion and said "Should we allow this?" and decided no, and then just went ahead and tried to enforce that. Once they've come to decision to not allow something they're not going to let it pass just because a lot of people are reposting it. If you give up after deleting the first 100 threads it makes you look pretty stupid.

On /r/soccer what's happened a few times is some story will come up like the one you mentioned, every single thread on the topic is deleted and then a day or so later there will be some announcement they had another discussion and have changed their mind so will allow one or more threads to be posted. There was a similar thing on /r/worldnews a few years ago when there was a spate of sexual assaults in Cologne at a Christmas/New Year parade. Initially all threads on this were removed on the grounds this wasn't really world news, but since it made the front page of many international papers was the main story on the BBC, etc - that initial judgement looked pretty stupid and threads were allowed.

I mean, it could be "kickbacks" driving this thing but honestly a lot of it is easy to explain without recourse to that. It's still arbitrary but not necessarily corrupt.

> if Section 230 is weakened by the court. Unlike other companies that hire content moderators, the content that Reddit displays is “primarily driven by humans—not by centralized algorithms.”

Not true. Reddit mods enforce reddit rules, primarily. These rules have grown increasingly onerous over time. There is no more restrictive ruleset on reddit than those imposed by reddit inc. itself. This includes moderation by automoderation scripts written and enabled by volunteer moderators, at the behest(and their own) of reddit.

Indeed, if reddit moderators do not enforce the rules of reddit then they will lose their positions as moderators and likely be banned as well.

I fear a ruling where the interpretation of Section 230 puts dang at risk of liability for all of his necessary and appropriate historic moderation.

It is interesting to read HN comments demanding more laws and regulations and restrictions on how social media operates. Usually the commenters are unaware that HN is a social media.

HN has algorithmic ranking, it has invisible moderation, it has shadowbanning (sort of), and it has YC sponsored ads injected into the “feed” that get special treatment relative to user submissions.

Many regulation proposals seem to have carve outs for sites and networks below a certain size, but if one past without such exceptions then a lot of the community sites we know and love would have no choice but to shut down.

I suspect a lot of the proponents of these regulations aren’t really interested in seeing the sites they like subjected to these regulations. It has almost become a talking point about punishing social media companies people don’t like others using.

But none of these things are what Google is accused of doing. Google is accused of recommending pro-ISIS videos to someone who ended up killing a bunch of people. Which is not really what 230 was meant to protect against.

230 is there to enable the existence of online platforms. It's not there to let Google wring every dollar out of YouTube they can, damn the societal consequences.

The worry is that the decision will be far more expensive. More like using this case as an excuse to do what they wanted to.

Much like Dobbs or a number of other recent cases.

If you held YC liable for its user content it would be broadly alright because YC has very very good moderation and for the most part bad stuff gets taken care of very quickly.

>If you held YC liable for its user content it would be broadly alright because YC has very very good moderation and for the most part bad stuff gets taken care of very quickly.

If you held YC liable for its user content, HN would (and quickly) no longer allow user comments.

Why? Because YC doesn't want the liability. Doing so would likely kill off most sites that allow user-generated content or, at the very least, cause them to stop accepting such content.

Ironically, the folks who would have the best ability to fight the dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of lawsuits filed every week would be the ones that have the deepest pockets (Alphabet, Meta).

Everyone else would likely just fold unless they had a few million in cash they can use for frivolous lawsuits.

And that's the point. Section 230 forces plaintiffs to sue the authors of such content, not those who host that content.

There's a lot of nuance with that, as the algorithmic feeds and showing content (allegedly) based on previous user interactions could be argued to be "authorship" of a sort.

The arguments on both sides are nuanced and complex -- based on ideas about freedom of expression and private property rights.

Personally, I think that, on the whole, Section 230 does more good than harm. But I also believe there is room for disagreement among rational, good faith interlocutors.

Good moderation & ranking is nearly invisible, like good email spam filtering. We forget (or never even knew) just how much we depend on it.

It isn't to the people who get actions taken against their commentary that they deem restrictive, though. And while the average person will simply take the moderation action with a grain of salt, I've been in a situation before where I've had to recommend en-masse banning of people who originally had constructive comments that I largely agreed with.

Oh my, how dare the people you agreed with one one issue, once have different opinion than you on other stuff!

Must've been a traumatic experience realizing that is even possible!

You misunderstand, and perhaps I didn't describe the situation well enough, but you also seem incredibly bitter.

Imagine that you join a small subreddit focused on a hobby for which there's a lot of corporate-induced bullshit and not a whole lot of real information unless you've talked to actual experts in an informal setting (as in, company owners and manufacturers). It has maybe 400 members at the time, and most of those users come from other forums you recognize. Most of the users in that forum are past the novice phase for the most part, so their interest is a focus on deeper discussions that can further their own knowledge and expertise within that hobby.

As time goes on, more and more new people start posting, including many who are neophytes and can't tell their heads from their asses. They start to flood the forum with images of whatever it is they've just purchased and make the content that experienced members like to exchange harder and harder to find.

Meanwhile, the head mod is absent, he basically squatted on the subreddit, but reddit rules don't actually require one to maintain much activity in the sub. So the moderation team that actually has guidance and leadership are also a bunch of neophytes who begged for moderator status. They don't see anything wrong with the sheer lack of content in the subreddit because the sub is growing by thousands a month, but in the process all of the people who have actual knowledge of the topic are being driven off.

So now there's a crisis on multiple fronts: (1) the people who actually know what they're talking about are being driven off and not being replaced and so the sub is literally getting dumber on a daily basis, (2) you've got a core group of folks who actually used to be central to discussions who are now so incensed by moderator indifference that they're acting like idiots on the subreddit, and (3) the mods are paralyzed because they don't want to piss ANYBODY off.

That shit is dysfunctional. I agreed with the group of jerks that the subreddit needed to have a shift in what's allowable because it was nigh-impossible to find comment threads worth reading, but I also told them earlier that their best bet would be to create their own subreddit with their own rules (which is exactly what I did when they wanted to forbid talk about a specific topic... that sub has 30K or so readers now), and they wanted none of that. Since the mods were committed to growing the sub and not making the recommended changes, I told the mods after a while of watching these people behave like idiots that the best thing to do was to ban them. Didn't matter that I agreed with them in principle, the way they were going about trying to get the changes they wanted was belligerent.

> it has shadowbanning (sort of)

In what sense does HN have shadow banning (sort of)?

In the sense that HN has shadowbanning, but it's publicly reversible, so it's only sort of shadowbanning.

Uh, no, it's straight up shadowbanning, just because it can be undoed doesn't mean it isn't shadowbanning

Weakening Section 230 doesn’t just put dang at risk, it puts every HN user that takes an action which alters the visibility of content, like flagging.

It specifically doesn't put any user at any more risk than we're already at. s230 protects hn from liability, it doesn't protect you, the user from liability.

Yeah, to my understanding you can currently be held liable for what you post online, but the platform can't be in trouble for distributing it.

That's not true. Section 230 is based on a principle that someone is responsible for the content a post, and creators and publishers don't get to both deflect responsibility to the other.

Next, YC would be the relevant entity, not dang personally. (But that's a minor point because dang is part of YC. )

The difference between you and YC is that YC actually collects posts and re- publishes them.

Users simply tell YC if they like a post or not. They don't transmit the post content to anyone.

YC decides whether to grey a post or remove it, or keep it. Showing a post higher or lower on a page doesn't mean anything related to whether the post violates some law and someone needs to be held responsible.

Reddit mods are closer, since they have specific power to ban a post or poster.

> Section 230 is based on a principle that someone is responsible for the content a post

No, its not. Law predating section 230 is based on the principal that lots of people can be responsible for published content.

Section 230 is based on the conclusion that certain of those rules making people liable are inappropriate in the online context; particularly those that would give any active moderators of content liability as publishers, which does not depend on actual knowledge of the illegality of any content. These rules were being applied to both sites and users other than the creator when section 230 was adopted, which is why it explicilty protects both operators and users.

Section 230 doesn't he impact the liability of creators at all

From the article, what Reddit is arguing:

> “Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act famously protects Internet platforms from liability, yet what’s missing from the discussion is that it crucially protects Internet users—everyday people—when they participate in moderation like removing unwanted content from their communities, or users upvoting and downvoting posts,” a Reddit spokesperson told Ars.

Honestly that sounds like fear-mongering, Reddit wants to protect its interests by turning the public against section 230 reform.

Reddit is afraid they'll be held responsible for the actions of moderators they have no control over. Their business model is at risk so they're spinning it as something that threatens their users.

Reddit has exactly as much control over moderators as their own policies dictate, which they can change at any time.

Perhaps Section 230 shouldn't extend to sites with anonymity. If somebody is harmed then somebody should be liable.

An issue is you have anons causing harm to users who cannot be sued and the platform also cannot be sued. No good.

> Perhaps Section 230 shouldn’t extend to sites with anonymity. If somebody is harmed then somebody should be liable.

The creator is liable even if they are anonymous.

There is a difference between someone being liable and it being easy to identify who they are. (And, even if the site owner isn’t liable, a John Doe suit against the anonymous user can be a framework within which to subpoena the site owner for records which help to identify the liable user.)

I don't like that. If the user cannot be held liable for whatever reason it needs to fall on the site. I don't like that people can be harmed without recourse. There is little incentive for the site to run communities that aren't toxic.

There's little incentive for good moderation, and there's little cost for any moderation, which makes sites business models work.

I agree with you that it has gaps and ugly side effects, but it also has the effect that a lot of things are working because you're not by default responsible for them because they've been commented on your server.

This Court case largely isn't about that; the protections for moderation Section 230 grants are largely not in question here.

The question is whether an automated algorithm is protected by 230 in the same sense that manual moderation is. To the extent this might impact HN, it'd be more along the lines of "HN weights stories too heavily by (upvotes, time of post, some other metric) and as a result harm has occurred."

Rules will probably limited to communities over a certain size, larger than that of HN I would bet.

I'm pretty new here. Can you elaborate? Edit: On the "necessary and appropriate historic moderation" part.

The claim by some is that 230 protections shouldn’t apply if the site at all influences what is shown to other users - essentially, moderation. There’s all sorts of made up distinctions between publisher and web site (most of it disingenuous) but it generally boils down to various political factions upset that the “wrong” sort of content isn’t moderated away, or the “right” sort of content is. Which is right or wrong depends on how you lean politically.

> if the site at all influences what is shown to other users - essentially, moderation

Which is bizarre, given the legislative history of Section 230, whose entire point was to protect and encourage private censorship by sites and users.

Section 230s entire point is to encourage online communities

You can't have a healthy online community without moderation. It gets overrun by spammers, trolls, off-topic conversations, and flamewars. Moderation is the reason that all of us are here instead of Usenet or 4chan.

They didn't say anything about 'healthy' though. Reddit, Twitter and Facebook have lots of trolls, off-topic conversations and flamewars (and spammers aren't that rare either), and yet they thrive.

Exactly. While in some ways moderation and censorship are synonymous, the intent is different. Moderation is necessary for healthy communities - online and offline.

What parent meant to mean is that "the claim by some is that section 230 is bad/unconstitutional and should be removed".

> A key protection shielding social media companies from liability for hosting third-party content—Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act—is set to face its first US Supreme Court challenge.

The desire for protection isn’t the same as saying 230 actually applies. The case made it to the Supreme Court because it isn’t clear where exactly the law does and does not apply.

User content and the promotion of user content are different things. If Facebook picks a specific message out of the billions posted they can find basically any message ever said. The choice of a handful of messages to post on a TV commercial moves the message from user content to Facebook’s message.

Legally 230 could be limited to direct content and it’s moderation (removal) but not cover manual curation. Similarly purely algorithmic feeds may be yet another meaningful distinction.

It’s a surprisingly complicated topic and I doubt the Supreme Court will make a broad ruling covering every case.

Funnily enough DMCA 512 already works this way. If you manually curate a content feed you lose your copyright safe harbor. So you're actually incentivized to remain willfully blind to certain aspects of how your site is being used. The Copyright Office has been complaining about this and arguing that we should pull all recommendation systems outside of the copyright safe harbor.

I kind of disagree with this. It would make both safe harbors kind of nonsensical, because we're incentivizing platforms to keep their systems broken. We understand that free speech on the Internet requires a minimal amount of censorship: i.e. we have to delete spam in order for anyone else to have a say. But one of the ways you can deal with spam is to create a curated feed of known-good content and users.

Keep in mind too that "purely algorithmic feeds" is not a useful legal standard. Every algorithm has a bias. Even chronological timelines: they boost new posts and punish old news. And social media companies change the algorithm to get the result they want. YouTube went from watch time to engagement metrics and now uses neural networks that literally nobody understands beyond "it gives better numbers". And how exactly do you deal with an "algorithmic" feed with easter eggs like "boost any post liked by this group of people"?

The alternative would be to do what the Copyright Office wants, and take recommendation systems out of the defamation and copyright safe harbors entirely. However, if we did this, these laws would only protect bare web hosts. If you had a bad experience with a company and you made a blog post that trended on Facebook or Twitter, then the company could sue Facebook or Twitter for defamation. And they would absolutely fold and ban your post. Even Google Search would be legally risky to operate fairly. Under current law, the bad-faith actor in question at least have to make a plausible through-line between copyright law and your post to get a DMCA 512 notice to stick.

By purely algorithmic systems I mean something like the a hypothetical Twitter timeline showing the top 4 tweets of everyone you’ve followed in purely chronological order. Or a Reddit feed purely based on submission time and upvotes.

A curated feed being something like the current HN front page where websites from specific manually chosen domains are penalized.

I am not saying there is anything inherently wrong with curation, it may simply to reflect what users want. However, as soon as you start making editorial decisions it’s no longer purely user generated content. Which was the distinction I was going for, it’s still an algorithm just not a blind one.

> Every algorithm has a bias.

Using upvotes, deduplicating, or penalizing websites based on the number of times they have been on the front page in the last week definitely has bias, but it isn’t a post specific bias targeted by the website owner. I agree the lines aren’t completely clear, when you start talking AI the story specific bias can easily be in how the AI was trained, but I suspect something that flags child porn would be viewed differently than something that promotes discrimination against a specific ethnic group.

dang is the moderator here.

This is interesting because it provides a very clear geopolitical incentive for actors to acquire control of Reddit moderatorships - an anonymous and untraceable way to influence a Supreme Court decision.

Reddit isn't required to include every moderator's comments in their brief...

Ironic that Reddit moderators, some of the biggest jagoffs on the Web, might end up helping to protect online freedom.

Uh-oh! One of them down-modded my statement of fact.

The notion of Reddit mods being selfless unpaid volunteers is misleading. They wield considerable power, and it's a desired position. Also, mods have been known to engage in payola and other deception for personal gain/profit. And too many arbitrary rules, too many shadow bans/deletions, etc.

And Reddit is paying some moderators. It's called the Community Builders Program; they are mostly paying people to moderate UK- and India-specific subs. US $20/hour; most volunteer mods know nothing about this but it's in the open.

Article: https://reddit.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4418715794324-C...

Announcement for India mods: https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianMods/comments/w4k4y4/launchin...

Discussion about UK mods: https://www.reddit.com/r/RoyalsGossip/comments/xfn4t2/adminr...

This is an initiative of the new VP of Community: https://communityvalidated.co/community-lessons/reddit-a-gli...

Courts should be more concerned about whether a large U.S. private business such as Reddit is even allowed to use any unpaid labor:

https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/whd/flsa/docs/volunteers.asp "Under the FLSA, employees may not volunteer services to for-profit private sector employers."

https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/how... "There are no general regulations that permit volunteering of services to an employer in the private sector. All hours worked must be paid. According to the FLSA, an employer must pay all employees not less than the minimum wage for all hours worked."

https://hrdailyadvisor.blr.com/2018/01/04/can-accept-volunte... "Most for-profit organizations cannot accept volunteer, unpaid labor without running afoul of the FLSA."

I believe reddit has been a part although its hard to say how big of ones it’s played in further diving people. It’s in my experience the worst social media at putting you inside a completely one sided bubble with twitter as a very close second.

Part of that being downvote is just used as i disagree with you even when you are adding a valid but different view to the conversation. I don’t use reddit anymore outside of trying to find recommendations for products but even that is being gamed now.

it's crazy to me that reddit doesn't have staff doing the moderation job for the bigger subreddits. most of the content on the front page is from 5-10 subreddits which are all moderated by the same super-moderators, who effectively set the policy for what content is allowed and not allowed. and they do it with complete autonomy and independence.

either that, or the few anonymous people who run reddit actually are reddit staff, and reddit prefers to keep the appearance of subreddits being "community-run" because unpopular mod actions can be swept away by retiring a moderator's profile.

They don’t have to pay anybody… there’s no shortage of people who are more than happy to wield the power of being a mod and share the political and corporate values of the Reddit staff.

Not to mention Reddit doesn’t have as many legal responsibilities over them if they don’t pay them I guess.

They generally prefer to retire whole subreddits

I don't think this changes the point, which is, "If I moderate a forum--even for free--what is my exposure to liability from things people post to that forum?"

Not to mention the obvious political bias in many subs that state they are neutral and objective.

That is one of my biggest issues with Reddit. One big gaslighting operation. Even if you agree with 9/10 opinions, If you disagree with one, you are made out to be an “other” and an adversary.

Just look at how dis-functional it can be, even when everyone is on board with the same basic principals (r/antiwork)

> Just look at how dis-functional it can be, even when everyone is on board with the same basic principals (r/antiwork)

That's kinda terrible example as just the name sparks divide; you get anyone from between "we just want good worker rights" to "we want communism back"

The name suggest they're against working, seems that draws a pretty good line in the sand, no?

Their FAQs state:

A subreddit for those who want to end work, are curious about ending work, want to get the most out of a work-free life, want more information on anti-work ideas and want personal help with their own jobs/work-related struggles.

https://old.reddit.com/r/antiwork/wiki/index

Can you cite some specifics and numbers on Reddit mods engaging in payola and deception for personal gain/profit?

Which topics and subreddits? Was it for political views, bias towards specific companies/ products/ advertisers? What is Reddit's legal obligation to monitor and oversee that, IYO? Should their mods have sponsorship or conflict-of-interest disclosures, like how financial commentators do?

here is a notable incident

https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/reddit-hire-spam-ian-miles-...

Ghislaine Maxwell was a power mod.

A more important point about Reddit specifically is that when Reddit finally goes IPO, all the mods get ZERO. The investors and the engineers and all the workers at Reddit will become rich, but the people who do the most important work, as outlined by the brief, are the anonymous moderators that create the culture of every subreddit. They get NOTHING.

I find it amazing that this hasn't been brought up by the moderators themselves, and they're okay getting all the outcome and profits from their hard work literally picked away by Reddit. They don't even share in the profits of the advertising revenue from their subreddits! It's really incredible to me.

It hasn't been brought up, because it is ridiculous. Reddit is a platform to create communities, and people operating subs are reddit's customers. With the same logic you could argue that everyone posting on Twitter should have participated in their IPO, the same goes for Facebook, TikTok and whatever platform you can imagine. Why isn't Discord paying the server admins? HN would be nothing without people posting links. Should OP be paid by YCombinator for this thread?

Discord does have a revenue share. [1] Elon Musk also recently stated that he planned to add creator monetization to Twitter. [2]

From Discord

> Good news: It's a 90/10 split! This means you, the creator, get to keep 90% of each monthly Server Subscription you sell, minus some small processing fees for legal’s sake.

From Elon Musk

> Followed by creator monetization for all forms of content

[1] https://discord.com/creators/server-subs-101-earning-money-o...

[2] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589010272341340160

The mods are NOT the commenters. There's a difference. Twitter moderates its own content via algorithms. Reddit still has comments in the same way Twitter does. But moderators literally moderate the content to make sure it's good and engaging and THAT'S what drives reddit.

The mods are also moderating voluntarily.

They are 'paid' with the power to promote certain opinions/ideas/products while suppressing others.

The most active+powerful mods are doing it as a form of activism, not as 'unpaid community builders'.

It's funny, but although there's not even the slightest thread of a relationship as the legal system would see it, we are in a sense "the authors of Twitter."

Hah. Community management, including moderation, is a job. We know this because of the AOL Community Leader Program class action:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_Community_Leader_Program

I'm torn between disgust and embarrassment for the people providing free, unofficial support for trillion dollar tech companies via Reddit Requests. They literally get nothing, no job placement, no recognition, no pay or benefits, and no way to be made whole for providing services that have a real, demonstrable impact on company perception and operation.

There is more to life than just money.

Reddit is the vehicle - a mere tool - people use to help build community around an interest - before Reddit, it was yahoo groups, or you had to go host your own forum somewhere.

So while yes, Reddit benefits from their work and content, keeping reddit sustainably funded also keeps alive all of those communities.

This is a really charitable view of things.

Most of reddit is controlled by "powermods" who mod anywhere from dozens to hundreds of subreddits. They collect them for clout and don't give the slightest damn about their communities, don't participate in them, don't have time to even spend time reading them and getting a feel for them, etc. They're not trained or educated in community management for the betterment of said community.

Nobody has the sort of free time to spend moderating an active community, especially unpaid - and therefore they must be getting paid by someone other than reddit. I'm convinced that a large number of subreddits are moderated by accounts that are controlled, directly or indirectly, by advertising, PR, and reputation management firms - and government agencies, ranging from intelligence to "PR." Either directly, or via payoffs to promote or suppress certain subjects, topics, and types of posts.

I think there's a reason Ghislaine Maxwell - whose father was an intelligence agent - was a reddit powermod.

Most volunteers for any organization are neither trained or educated in the thing they're volunteering to do, thats why they're volunteers and not paid labor. As soon as you start putting requirements for compliance training or whathaveyou on volunteers, they start needing to be paid.

This cuts both ways. If there's more to life than money, why not spread it around to those who create the value of the thing you're selling?

"There's more to life than money" is used by capital owners to justify the exploitation of labor.

I imagine you're going to get a very different type of person moderating if they have a monetary incentive to do so. I don't disagree with your argument in the broad sense—the rich get richer at the expense of everyone else, and they shouldn't—but adding money to a relationship that doesn't have it always fundamentally changes the relationship, and the incentive structure, and it doesn't guarantee better outcomes.

I have an application to the LinkedIn group of ex-Oracle employees. It was ignored for months and months.

Finally, I wrote to one of the admins. He apologized and said he had a lot of groups he was admin for, and asked, now which group was I talking about, again?

Does LinkedIn pay their admins? Don't know.

I moderate communities on telegram, I already have people who treat me and my mod team like we are being paid, and this is our full-time job, and we should be more responsive to their concerns. I wouldnt want to be actually paid and have an expectation of quality of service.

The same is true of parents: they “do the most important work” of creating and raising their children, but after they become adults, the parents have NO legal rights to any income from their children. “They get NOTHING”

Is that really true in the case of parents? If not, might the same reasons (e.g. intrinsic motivation, non-financial rewards such as inter-personal bonds) possibly apply here too?

I think it would be interesting though to think about what sort of monetization structure might encourage the development of more healthy communities

[Warning: all analogies are “wrong”, but some are useful…]

> parents have NO legal rights to any income from their children

not all parents believe that.

Some people raise their kids to be their slaves. The results get ugly.

> A more important point about Reddit specifically is that when Reddit finally goes IPO, all the mods get ZERO.

Some mods have definitely been making money controlling the content that appear on the popular subs, e.g. [1]

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/trees/comments/oh5o4/rtrees_nonprof...

They also get to make arbitrary decisions with no accountability. Essentially, the site is their personal fiefdom. Why would they waste their time unless they are benefiting in some way?

Exactly. As soon as you get subs over 100K you get anon mods out there accepting bribes, kickbacks, and/or on weird power trips.

Bravo to the mods on the tiny subs, but in my experience (both as a mod of a top sub and as a contributor) the anon mod behavior becomes 20% toxic when a sub gets popular.

And don't forget the obligatory rules that are so vague nobody can actually adhere to them and still have conversation yet got invoked only when mod wants to have excuse to ban something

Like one proeminent example some years ago (gallowb...) and I'm sure there are more modern ones as well

Why is there always, "but they're getting rich!"

Who cares? I'm sure the mods are aware. They do it anyway because it's beneficial having a healthy community that they are also users of.

Probably the same reason people waste their time playing video games or reading science fiction. Scoundrels!!

In those cases you aren’t exercising control over someone else’s creative expression.

You’re ascribing a negative motive by establishing one could exist. Surely there are petty tyrants on Reddit. But the much simpler, most generous, and most likely explanation is they enjoy a hobby and enjoy fostering a healthy community around their hobby, and that this itself is a hobby of theirs. The word moderator wasn’t invented for social media, and the role is crucial in any healthy intellectual community. Because your creative expression may very well be disruptive to everyone else’s, and while you’re free to be creative in your expressions in general, others are free to exclude you from their community. The moderator gets the unpleasant job of being the executor of that will.

I think the most important thing is most moderators I know hate the function of moderator. But the community is important enough they do it anyways.

So, I guess I take it back. It’s more like producing a video game or editing science fiction. It’s work we do to be sure everyone can enjoy a hobby we love.

> You’re ascribing a negative motive by establishing one could exist. Surely there are petty tyrants on Reddit. But the much simpler, most generous, and most likely explanation is they enjoy a hobby and enjoy fostering a healthy community around their hobby, and that this itself is a hobby of theirs

That seems to be near exclusive to smaller communities. I definitely seen it, I also seen ones that mostly self-moderated with mod hammer only being used in more excessive cases (basically members telling other members "dude, that's not okay because of x, we dont do that here" and mods only needing to intervene in more severe cases.

But near-every bigger one seems to devolve into a clique that pushes their personal playground in direction they want, despise what their users think, but the social forum is big enough and not bad enough yet for most people to leave because of that.

> Because your creative expression may very well be disruptive to everyone else’s, and while you’re free to be creative in your expressions in general, others are free to exclude you from their community. The moderator gets the unpleasant job of being the executor of that will.

Well, if you get good moderators, sure, that works. But for already mentioned reasons it often gets to be executor of only their own clique's will, despise what the actual users of the forum think

> So, I guess I take it back. It’s more like producing a video game or editing science fiction. It’s work we do to be sure everyone can enjoy a hobby we love.

Nope, it's creating zero value of its own. Janitor or garbage man would be better comparison, unnoticeable when doing the job well, but the place would quickly fill with garbage if not

That seems to be near exclusive to smaller communities

Well, if you get good moderators, sure, that works.

> So, I guess I take it back. It’s more like producing a video game or editing science fiction. It’s work we do to be sure everyone can enjoy a hobby we love.

Nope, it's creating zero value of its own. Janitor or gargabe man would be better comparison

Reddit mods, for the most part, don't need money. I imagine there's tons that would even pay money to "remain" as a mod if they could.

Many reddit mods are motivated by nothing more than some semblance of power over other people. Just look at the way one of the big subreddits operates:

https://www.gamerevolution.com/news/931803-reddit-art-subred...

I've personally been banned from a handful of subs all at once (due to the mod being a mod on all of them) because I argued with a moderator that humidity is worse than dry heat.

No, they don't get "zero" - they get their purpose. Otherwise, they would get a job. Coincidentally, you almost have to be job-less or have next to no other obligations to be a mod on reddit. I personally created and "mod" a community that's not very big at all but still requires cleaning up... but I could never see myself justifying more than 15 minutes a day to that "job."

> but the people who do the most important work,

Strange, I thought that was the people contributing and curating the content, ie the posts and comments. They also do it for free. Should they be paid too?

They get to moderate the discussion of the message board, which is what they want to do. It isn't a job - the admins actually get paid.

Why would the moderators get anything for creating a message board using a free message board service?

If phpBB IPOed 15 years ago, would everyone who downloaded and hosted an instance deserve a cut of the IPO?

What these moderators seem to crave the most is power. The majority of them are unemployed loners with lots of time to kill, who are unappreciated in real life and don't have much power over their own lives. So they enjoy the small sliver of power that Reddit gives them.

There are also the agenda-pushers, who obtain moderator positions in order to control the narrative on Reddit. Just look at how certain ideological views are essentially uncriticizable on that site.

If you can get access to the Discords (or the leaks thereof) where these moderators think they are discussing things in private, it's a fascinating insight into their culture. Some of them occasionally acknowledge that they're doing all this work for Reddit for free, though it's a somewhat taboo topic too.

It's apparent from my limited experience there that you are right: some subreddits are dominated by a certain demographic group, and they Report anything they don't like as "offensive." Then the mods dutifully remove it, since they're only interested in pleasing their group to keep their power, such as it is.

something, something, "power" which Lincoln apparently didn't say:

[1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lincoln-character-power/

> The majority of them are unemployed loners with lots of time to kill, who are unappreciated in real life and don't have much power over their own lives. So they enjoy the small sliver of power that Reddit gives them.

Nailed it. Reddit went completely off the rails during the Pao reign. Never figured out what they get out of it apart from a power trip.

You'll either see subreddits add lots of mods, or culling them. For example, /r/ukpolitics has 22 probably-human mods [0]

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/about/moderators

Reddit has a complex ownership history. At one point Condé Nast actually owned Reddit as a subsidiary (majority ownership) and now their parent company does. I am sure it may IPO eventually but I’m not entirely sure the employees will make out like bandits

> The investors and the engineers and all the workers at Reddit will become rich, but the people who do the most important work, as outlined by the brief, are the anonymous moderators that create the culture of every subreddit.

That's assuming the IPO goes well

And to reply in a single comment:

Reddit is nothing without its moderators. The moderators create engagement through their hard work. You can take a great topic, and it will die in the hands of bad mods. Reddit owes its entire existence to its mods.

The equivalent is Twitter or TikTok's algorithm. Reddit has tricked thousands upon thousands of people to do the hard work for free.

They SHOULD get paid by reddit. Or, maybe reddit should adopt and non-profit structure and never IPO. But the idea that all these reddit employees will eventually become millionaires on the backs of free labor is disgusting.

It's funny how HN loves to shit on Lyft/Doordash/Uber for exploiting drivers, meanwhile if reddit mods get paid it's somehow dishonorable. For the record, Uber gave shares to some of its best drivers upon IPO.

Shows the need for digital signatures of any creative output of any individual.

People matter too.

This is your reminder that past Reddit powermods and hired staff allegedly include Ghislane Maxwell [0] (who Ellen Pao knew and socialized with in Pao's time as Reddit CEO [1]), alleged rape and kidnapping accomplice Aimee Challenor [2] (criticism of whose hiring Reddit censored for days before relenting), and convicted domestic abuser creeps like u/bardfinn who abuse their moderator powers and allegedly flood competing subreddits with CSAM material [3]. These people do not deserve anonymity, nor an assumption of good faith.

[0] https://www.the-sun.com/news/4460492/ghislaine-maxwell-reddi...

[1] https://nypost.com/2020/07/08/ex-reddit-ceo-ellen-pao-knew-g...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aimee_Challenor

[3] https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/theres-another-abusive-...

Please don't use HN for this sort of pre-existing ideological drama battle or whatever this is.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

If you care about the guidelines, enforce them consistently. This is the comment which spurred me to start posting yesterday:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34480065

>Whatever your politics: The reactionary conservative movement, with its campaign to politicize everything (now working on the FBI and Department of Justice, for example), has permanently degraded the country; we won't have these institutions back for generations.

It's such clear flamebait and "ideological battle"-ish that your reply to me, upthread from the above which sits there unflagged, feels like a slap in the face. In all likelihood I'd have gone on with my day if I hadn't stumbled on such a ridiculous, inflammatory, un-moderated comment.

Incidentally, even my very clearly rule-following comments on this link appear flagged:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34484182

I'm used to old high-karma accounts with clear biases abusing user flags and community moderation features. It's much more frustrating to see arbitrary, inconsistent enforcement from actual moderators.

Consistency in moderation isn't possible because we don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here.

I've read that comment and flagged it and posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34493349 now. Still, it was nowhere near as much of a guidelines violation as what you did. Your reply didn't even relate to what the GP had said—it was pure offtopic ideological boilerplate, plus name-calling. That kind of thing will get you banned here regardless of what you're arguing for or how wrong other people are or you feel they are.

People routinely accuse us of being secretly aligned with their enemies. It always feels like the mods are against you. This is a reflex response that has zero to do with how we actually moderate HN. Do you have any idea how many people accuse us of being secretly aligned with your views? They do that from exactly the same cognitive bias. Every side feels that way, and they all get super mad about it. The one thing you all ironically agree about is who to blame!

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

And here's another bullshit flamebait comment, upvoted and unflagged. I won't bother to reply to this one. Will you take action? I will watch and take note.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34487518

I've reflagged that comment. However, there's a big gap between that and what you were posting here. That user was clearly engaging in a conversation, albeit using flamebaity terminology, while you were pulling in wheelbarrows full of pre-existing talking points, complete with lists of links. That's obviously using the site for ideological battle and obviously off topic.

No evidence that Ghislane Maxwell was a Reddit employee or moderator of any subreddits.

No evidence that /u/bardfinn was posting CSAM.

You may want to be careful because baseless accusations like this is libellous.

There is evidence for both of these, you just choose not to accept it.

Also, Bardfinn is a particularly creepy guy who is also known for violence towards women, including his ex-wife. Is this libellous? There are police reports, you know.

>>These people do not deserve anonymity, nor an assumption of good faith.

sorry no... We do not strip essential liberty simply because there are bad actors out there who abuse it.

The problem is not these individuals persay. The problem is Reddits moderation system in the first place. That enables "power mods" and gives the community no power to remove bad mods, and creates corrupting incentive systems along with admins that further corrupt this system by bestowing favors and powers upon the mods they favor.

This has been a problem since the start of reddit and could be solved if Reddit had any desire to stop it, they dont so reddit continues it path on becoming worse than Twitter (if it has not already beaten it)

>sorry no... We do not strip essential liberty simply because there are bad actors out there who abuse it.

That's not at stake. What's at stake is the power of a privileged few to get special concessions from the United States Supreme Court.

Anonymity is not an essential liberty. It appears nowhere in the US Constitution or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Ohh yes it is an essential liberty, and the founders of this nation clearly thought so which is why they published their Federalist Papers advocating the ratification of the new constitution under Pseudonym, anonymously.

Secondly I give no shits about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is a terrible document and no one should respect it. It is an authoritarian power grab guised as freedom. Nothing the UN does is for freedom.

Finally, the US Constitution is not an enumeration of rights, in fact Madison did not even want the Bill of Rights for fear people later in history would claim just as you are now that the Bill of Rights is the enumeration of all Human Rights. Which is why they added the 9th amendment. Perhaps you should read that one sometimes. it is pretty important and often ignored

"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." -- Amendment IX

If it's an essential liberty then it should be available to all who file Supreme Court briefs, not just a privileged few.

And don’t forget about violentacrez, the original power mod moderating a child exploitation subreddit (jailbait, which was a subreddit for posting sexually suggesting photos of children). They gave him an award for this and called “jailbait” subreddit of the year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communiti...

The GM link is tenuous at best, and has never been proven.

There's a lot more evidence than covered in the linked article. I find it absolutely convincing. Here's a recap of most of it:

https://old.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/hnfx0r/not_conf...

> Unlike other companies that hire content moderators, the content that Reddit displays is “primarily driven by humans—not by centralized algorithms.”

Reddit’s entire business model is Astroturfing-as-a-service, so I don’t believe this for a second.

Ding ding ding. Being forced to reveal this information is why they'll never IPO.

While I generally agree that when someone does something violent, you blame them rather than the words on the page or the screen that they read, Reddit is an awful example here since its TOS is so perverse that it protects the most extreme and dishonest views on one side and then stifles any discussion and debate on the other.

So for example, if I posted "100 black Americans are killed every day by white Americans", which is obviously both misleading and inaccurate, you would be risking your account by engaging in any kind of discussion or debate, or even arguing that you should be allowed to discuss and debate that. That's because you would be violating multiple rules - first, a rule that protects specific races from criticism, second, a rule that disallows even accurate breakdowns of crime by race, and third, a rule that prevents you from discussing and debating aspects of the TOS itself.

Thus, by the rules of Reddit, my statement would stand completely unchallenged. Now realistically I don't think my statement alone would result in a rash of payback crimes, but over time you are giving people a skewed version of the world in which violence can be justified. And sure, one could argue that they're not legally responsible for what people do and that any attempt to hold them responsible is guilt by association, but OTOH I don't think any social media company wants that kind of reputation and press.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com