Comment by menus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by menus | Hacker News Reader

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Reddit has always walked "a thin line between becoming a dumpster fire and being the one stop shop for a good portion of the worlds interaction" (1) (2). It is up to you to figure out how you want your experience to be.

(1) https://slate.com/technology/2014/04/reddit-and-the-boston-m...

(2) https://www.vox.com/2015/6/11/8767035/fatpeoplehate-reddit-b...

> I would personally prefer to see reddit kick all of their moderators to the curb and stop catering to the snowflakes of the world.

I'm sorry about your experiences with whatever moderators you have a beef with. My guess is you are talking about large subreddit(s). Large subreddits have their issues with transparency I agree but what are you trying to suggest? Reddit-appointed moderators? If so, you are in for a rude awakening.

I would instead spend effort in stopping them from charging third party apps for API access that are objectively better than the official apps and ensuring that they dont kill old.reddit.com (3) like they killed i.reddit.com

(3) https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/12qwagm/an_update_r...

> It is up to you to figure out how you want your experience to be.

No, it's up to the subreddit moderators. They are the hidden hand that shapes the conversation.

Many of the popular subreddits have been taken over by groups of full-time moderators who are pushing various agendas. Their actions can't even be seen. We can only see the posts they've chosen to allow in their subreddits.

This is what I call "bush sculpture moderation", as I mentioned in a past comment here:

>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34462443#34467156

>If a person saw a bush sculpture for the first time ever they would probably think how it's really curious the bush has this well defined shape, and happily conclude that the bush is just like that. "Pretty cool how there is a bush with the shape of a dog's face" they'll think.

>In the same way, visiting a subreddit you would think that that's just the community and content. But once you see how moderation works you realize that in reality, the community is pulling to all sorts of places at the same time, and by pruning the content here and there with the shears of moderation, using the chainsaw that is automod and by motivating growth with precision via shadowbanning and choosing what becomes popular, you can perfectly shape a subreddit into the content you want.

"Bush sculpture moderation" is a great term! I'll add that to my lexicon.

> My guess is you are talking about large subreddit(s). Large subreddits have their issues with transparency I agree but what are you trying to suggest?

I want unpaid mods removed from the equation and for all content to be judged on the same scale and have full transparency to why moderation actions were taken, by who, and easy links to appeal. I also want clear rules for every subreddit, and if it's not a rule, users cannot be banned for it.

I've experienced many types of censorship, everything from mods silently deleting my posts without any reason or notification, then I occasionally get things removed with notes that the audience is too sensitive to have a real conversation (The topic was about dogs attacking people in my city). However all of my posts do not violate any of the published rules of the related subreddit. I argued more times with the moderators than I care to admit, till I just said fuck it, go ahead and ban me because I'll be back with another account in 10 minutes. I've gotten the game figured out on just creating many accounts and when one goes down, many others are available.

The dead accounts I can't use anymore actually make me some money, depending on the age and posting history. They can be sold for up to 50'ish dollars for a 11 year old account with 5k karma. However they won't be able to post in every sub, they're all banned from r/denver , r/askcarsales , r/denverbroncos , some are banned from r/linux because I called out some stupidity around RS, GNU and why it shouldn't expressly call out LGBT as an audience member allowed to use their software.

I'm up to 51 different accounts, about 20 of them banned from the previous subreddit... I try to birth 2-3 reddit accounts every month, with different verified emails.

I mean I get the point you are trying to make but well...

There is a great book by Phil Rosenthal, the creator of 'Everybody loves Raymond' called 'Your lucky you're funny'.

He used to have a job as an overnight security guard in a museum. One night he was feeling very tired and for whatever reason decided to take a nap in one of the displays, this was like the bed of George Washington or something of equal importance. He got woken up by another security guards and was pulled up on it and was fired on the spot.

By Phil asked to be forgiven for this because of his previous good behavior and his superior got him his job back. This was the plot of an episode of Rosanne that Phil wrote.

Sure he got his job back but now everyone else hated him because it showed favoritism, and thus he was eventually forced out of the job by others disliking this.

The overall lesson was, just because you can get back into a position doesn't mean it is a good idea. Maybe if others dislike you that much, why do you keep trying to get back in? Sure they may be petty and it doesn't seem just, but why would you keep trying to get involved in that if the same result happens again and again?

I mean you 2-3 new accounts a month, it sounds like you didn't learn the lesson of Sisyphus. Maybe it is time to just let the boulder roll down the hill and enjoy its tumble to the bottom of the valley.

> Maybe if others dislike you that much, why do you keep trying to get back in?

"Don't resist the bullies, just accept your fate." Same vibe.

Don't know what reason OP has for sticking with the shithole but I do appreciate that there are stubborn people like that.

> Maybe if others dislike you that much, why do you keep trying to get back in?

Because with moderator actions it's not the others in the community (most of whom rarely, or never post) who necessarily dislike you, it's the government, or even just particular actors within the government, who dislike you.

> but why would you keep trying to get involved in that if the same result happens again and again?

I'm not the GP. I don't have multiple accounts. Someone would do this for the brief time that their posts are up, and eyes see it. To know that those ideas exist within others in the community.

Ever think it might be you who's the problem?

Heh I’m banned from r/Denver as well

I specifically avoided going to /r/Denver after checking out the front page shortly after I moved here in 2020.

I don't think there are any city/state subreddits that are actually representative of their city/state. Except maybe /r/WashingtonDC. That subreddit was great when I lived there.

I have an easy suggestion. Something like: a single person can be a moderator on 5 subreddits max

Edit: Uh, why is this so unpopular it's getting multiple downvotes? Like, there are people that moderate hundreds of different subreddits and I don't think that's how the community self-moderation is supposed to work.

With VPNs, multiple accounts, and multiple browsers it's impossible to police.

>Large subreddits have their issues with transparency I agree but what are you trying to suggest? Reddit-appointed moderators? If so, you are in for a rude awakening.

I would create a system where moderators have far less power, and that Subreddit members can vote on rules, posts being deleted, etc. The system would be much more democratic. Members would also be able to challenge moderator actions or even reverse moderator actions.

As of right now, Reddit has a problem where moderators have too much power. On top of that, moderators aren't being paid so they can't be controlled.

Maybe it's a good thing that they can't be controlled?

Sure. They can't be controlled because they do it without monetary payments. But it's not a good thing that they can't be controlled when a sub gets to a certain size.

At some point, large subreddits become important to the internet and they outgrow the moderators.

You know how some founders are great when the startup is small but is completely incompetent when the startup grows and scales? Then VCs bring in "adults" to run the larger startup? Yea. It happens on subreddits too but founding moderators can't be kicked out as far as I know.

> They can't be controlled because they do it without monetary payments

... from reddit. Some are probably being paid by organizations, businesses, or even countries. And others might be monetizing their sub-reddit in some way (e.g. some of the crypto or investing sub-reddits).

That's right!

All the more reason to create a more democratic and transparent system.

When crypto scams and exchanges were failing left and right, mods for official crypto exchange subreddits were deleting and censoring posts or shutting the subreddit down completely - leaving no place for bag holders to communicate and coordinate with each other.

Heck, even on HN, we could use a more democratic and transparent system. Right now, I'm convinced that HN blocks selective negative posts about Y Combinator.

Democracy on a platform known for having thousands of bots and more popping up all the time seems unlikely to perform as desired.

How do you suppose a single or 1-5 human moderators can cope with bots better than the collective subreddit members?

Or do you think that some bots will be so human like that they can't be distinguished by other subreddit users, but they can be distinguished by moderators?

Neat, then the trolls who already ruin many discussions would instead ruin whole subreddits. Just so people wouldn't get their feelings hurt when their ridiculous conspiracy theories get deleted.

There are conspiracy theories, and then there is soothsaying... It's one of the weird quirks of our culture that the former is considered bizarre, and the latter is considered ~logical/fine.

Possibly relevant:

https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-well-known-human-achieve...

No "soothsaying" required. Look at every single "free speech" platform. They're horrible places that push away most people other than those on the extreme fringes.

> No "soothsaying" required.

It is for your beliefs (about the future and ~millions of people you've not met) to be correct.

Tautologies are handy too, but it's easy to not realize one is dealing with them.

I would limit first-offense punishments to max 7 day bans. And to shadow-ban a post (versus locking it) for a first offense I'd require it be done by a Reddit admin, and then only for things such as site-wide rules violations.

>Subreddit members can vote on rules, posts being deleted, etc. The system would be much more democratic.

If you've never been into one of those "we let the upvotes decide" subreddits, then you don't realize that they inevitably turn into a tepid, unfocused grey blur of samey garbage. Moderators are necessary to keep a subreddit on track.

That's called the tyranny of the majority and it is absolutely not the point of small community creation on Reddit. Imagine you create a reddit and put it work to make it popular enough to get attention only to have some other group come in and say 'thanks we'll take it from here' and take away the community that you created and completely change it's dynamics.

You never played any online MUDs/games with votekicking enabled, I take it?

This always ends with a power clique banding together to vote everyone else off. "Just for lulz," of course.

There is no solution to this except mutiny. Ban the corrupt leader and elect someone favorable. Delegating rule to the mob is tried-and-failed.

Everything should be settled by scoutzknivez

Played CS 1.6 religiously.

However, you can base the democratic system based on the reputation of the user, rather than total number of votes. CS1.6 did not have these advanced systems in place.

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