Hacker News Reader

Comment by Terr_ | Hacker News Reader

> Nestler also suggested that this is an issue of personal responsibility, writing that “communities should honor the expectations they set – public communities should remain accessible to all; private communities should remain private.”

By that logic--functioning as a champion of casual visitors--shouldn't Reddit start being responsive when a moderation team gets taken over by a new clique and starts banning most of the regulars?

As a personal side-gripe: Their anti-spam/appeals process is also broken: A frequent account in good standing for over a decade can get l shadowbanned (including all comments anybody else ever made in reply), have the appeal granted, and then nothing is fixed and there's no way to contact anybody because the appeals page falsely claims the account is normal.

View on HN

Both Reddit and Nextdoor are suffering greatly from their volunteer mod problem.

They have basically allowed the worst elements of their community to dominate and manipulate their most valuable properties (the subs belong to Reddit, and when a bad mod team ruins a sub that hurts Reddit more than anyone)

Reddit corporate has also ruined small communities and directly allowed this kind of power mod takeover via minimum activity rules.

What’s a minimum activity rule?

I usually have the opposite experience, new mods destroy the community or it splinters into more subs.

The vanity of reddit made it possible that some of the worst people became mods. It was mostly some random pretext to throw people out of their own communities and many of them aren't around today anymore.

Powermods shouldn't even exist, maybe restrict mods to 1-2 subs. This would at least reduce very likely the vast amount of low quality moderation decisions.

But in the end I don't even believe this is fixable. New mods are rarer because the platform is mature. Of course you still can create niche subs, but those are in danger of being captured as well.

I'm curious how shadow-banning is even allowed by their own ToS.

If Reddit breaks the ToS, does that mean the "irrevocable" publishing license for everything you contributed is actually revoked?

As a matter of contract law, it seems odd to be able to declare something will survive the breaking of the contract's terms. (As distinct from regular termination.)

Ex: "The seller will irrevocably transfer ownership of the car to the buyer, and the buyer will give the seller X dollars", and then the buyer's check bounces.

The remedy has to be commensurate with the damage. In your car analogy, the remedy is pretty clearly "Give the car back" or similar.

In the Reddit ToS case, it's not clear that revoking licenses already granted will make you whole again. It all depends on the specific nature of the infraction and if penalties for it are already laid out in the contract. If Reddit declines your request to take a sub private, then why would taking away license to your comment fix anything? It's purely punitive, and I doubt there are any statutes with punitive damages that apply to this scenario.

In any case, I'd imagine that the ToS makes you agree to arbitration if you take issue with Reddit's adherence to it. Arbitration clauses aren't inserted into contracts because of how famously impartial and sympathetic arbiters are to plaintiffs. They're in there because they're a stacked deck.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com