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Comment by sltkr | Hacker News Reader

People are given power with the expectation that they wield that power responsibly. The purpose of the visibility feature is to allow moderators to create private communities, not to shut down thriving public communities as a form of protest.

If a cop shoots an unarmed suspect, they will get punished too. Would you defend the cop by saying “why give a cop a gun if you punish him for using it”? The cop is given a gun with the understanding that they only use it to shoot dangerous suspects; a cop that violates that expectation will have their gun taken away.

> If they don't want private subs, then convert them to public and turn that feature off.

The more reasonable solution would be to disallow moderators from changing the protection level after creating a sub (but allowing it by petitioning the admins). Would that make you happy?

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> People are given power with the expectation that they wield that power responsibly. The purpose of the visibility feature is to allow moderators to create private communities, not to shut down thriving public communities as a form of protest.

For a decade, reddit's message to mods was that this was our community. And we could institute rules as we see fit. If the system allowed it, we could do it.

That was obviously just propaganda and a blatant lie.

> If a cop shoots an unarmed suspect, they will get punished too. Would you defend the cop by saying “why give a cop a gun if you punish him for using it”? The cop is given a gun with the understanding that they only use it to shoot dangerous suspects; a cop that violates that expectation will have their gun taken away.

The fuck? Are you seriously comparing state sanctioned violence to a online glorified bulletin board? Just wow.

> For a decade, reddit's message to mods was that this was our community.

I think that era died with Aaron Swartz, which is more than a decade past. In the past decade Reddit admins have been banning thriving communities for not toeing the party line.

Where were you when Reddit banned /r/the_donald and all the lesbian subs? Probably cheering them on for enforcing a political agenda you agree with? Then what made you think you would be spared from the admin's wrath when you turned against them?

It sounds like a typical case of “I can't believe the leopards would eat my face!”

> The fuck? [..] Just wow.

Stop it with the rhetorical pearl clutching. If you have something intelligent to say, make a rational, coherent, dispassionate argument. Nobody benefits from this type of emotional outburst. Imagine I would respond in kind, saying: “Omg! Wow! Wow! Wow! I canNOT belIEVE you would SAY something like this! What the fuck??? Wow! Geez! Golly!" This is just meaningless word vomit.

> Are you seriously comparing state sanctioned violence to a online glorified bulletin board?

Do you seriously not understand what an analogy is?

I've seen a lot of this reject-all-analogies behavior on the Internet lately. I've been interested to find an underlying cause beyond just more kids online lately.

on the contrary, I don't think borderline invoking Godwin's law is a reflection of maturity either. Sure, you can compare everything to nazis if you want, but in 99% of the cases people making such exaggerated comparisons to the worst tragedies are probably derailing into something frivolous.

Hence, the "law".

I'd argue, that with more polarized disussion and team politics, there's more cognitive disonance simply because people have strong beliefs about topics they are less informed (or disinformed) about. As analogies are great for highlighting discrepencies in belief they are more offensive (in that they cause negative feelings) to a person considering them.

A more noble alternative is that the level of internet discourse has become so much more refined these days that if you simplify a new position to an old analogy you're just retreading old "solved" ground rather than discussing the nuances that make this particular topic business as usual/the end of society. To be fair most people are anti shooting babies and pro killing harmful parasites but neither of those analogies are particuarly novel or useful in an abortion discussion unless it's the first time you've considered the topic.

No that was just moderators slowing getting high on their own powertrips. Sure, Reddit inc basically let them do what they wanted but the original intent was actually that mods are part of a community, not some sort of petty tyrants. I guess it is truly reddit's fault for letting a bunch of... very online (I'm trying to be kind) and very very often severely maladjusted group of people establish their little fiefdoms.

... Also, one of the least diverse group (racially, religiously, culturally, politically and pretty much everything else) of people you could think of having such a control over """the front page of the internet"" (lol) lead to it turning into an insanely boring and one of the cringiest places on the internet. Twitter is downright refreshing compared to the average subreddit, which is saying a lot

The sad part is that I won't see the results of that rebalance of power, since I've only ever used Reddit on third party apps lol.

>but the original intent was actually that mods are part of a community, not some sort of petty tyrants

No, it was always to "create your own community". Right down to the asinine mechanic where the Head mod is simply first come first serve. If Mod A makes a community, assigns Mod B to moderate it, and leaves for 5 years, B cannot override A when he comes back without intervention from Admins. On the contrary, A can kick out B despite doing nothing for 5 years.

They very much designed it for "petty tyrants" and the site should/would have built a much better system to kick out inactive mods if they cared about "being part of a community". But I think we both know that Reddit just cared about free labor (until news sites force their hand).

>The more reasonable solution would be to disallow moderators from changing the protection level after creating a sub (but allowing it by petitioning the admins).

historically speaking, some subs have gone private short term simply to control some crazy amounts of spam or harassment. And there's many more instances where subs went restricted for a while. So this isn't the only feature of privating communities.

>not to shut down thriving public communities as a form of protest.

No tools are ever designed for use in protest, so this is a circular argument. That's part of what a protest is.

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