Reddit launches harassment crackdown
bbc.com
bbc.com
It gets really blatant if you've been on the site for any length of time. I really hope this doesn't kill the site, but it looks bad.
SRS's stated goal is to highlight people on Reddit saying bad things (casual racism, stuff like that). Someone from the community finds a post somewhere on reddit they feel meets the criterion, and they post it there. Often immediately afterwards, the post, and the user who made it, begin losing karma at a rate that cannot be described as coincidental.
One of the rules in SRS is "don't touch the poop" - you're not supposed to participate in a thread that gets linked there. However, looking at the relation between post time on SRS, and karma over time, there's no other explanation for what happens to the scores of comments that get posted there.
Before you say "meh, racists, who cares?" - two problems. First, SRS's aegis has expanded to cover any criticism of the social justice movement, rather than actual hurtful comments. Second, what's happening is explicitly against the site rules regarding vote manipulation (vote brigading) - other subreddits who engaged in similar behavior had to institute rules that mandate either "no participation" links (a CSS hack that disables the voting buttons), or outright banning of intra-subreddit linking at the urging of site administration staff.
I'm reminded of the Robbers Cave Experiment, wherein all it took to create conflict between two groups of summer campers was the act of dividing them into groups. The subreddit system is genius for allowing one site to serve so many different communities, but it also sets the stage for subreddits to see other subreddits as the enemy.
(And if this comment was on Reddit, I imagine there would pretty quickly be a link to it from /r/badphilosophy talking about how badly I've misunderstood the experiment and how stupid I am, all while not actually educating me or any of the people reading my comment.)
One simple experiment is to look at the front page of the subreddit - each link description has, per the rules, the amount of comment karma it has when it was submitted. Look at relatively new posts, and look at the difference in karma at submission time and then as time goes on.
I tried this a few times months ago, and being linked from SRS led to a significant decline in scores on every post in the top 25.
>"A bunch of din du nuffins. But when these thugs get killed their mom will cry murder and say he was such a good boy." [+27] (reddit.com) >esiper 50 points 12 hours ago
>"It started with /r/jailbait, but I wasn't a ephebophile so I didn't speak up. Then they came for /r/thefappening, but I didn't speak up because I wasn't into fuzzy pictures of people I don't know. Then /r/gamergate, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a gamer. I'm speaking up now." [+28] (reddit.com) >[–][deleted] 194 points 22 hours ago*
It looks like there's an increase in karma score after it gets linked from SRS
It also appears that these are copypasted straight from the front page, you'd have to click through and look at the score on the linked subreddit.
(submitted 33 minutes ago by so_srs) "The modern view on gender: Acceptable: Female and spending most of your time on the celphone, reading literotica, and playing candy crush. Unacceptable: Male and spending most of your time on the computer, watching porn, and playing World of Warcraft." [+25] (reddit.com) -> (at 1:16 CST)[–]comosayllama 68 points an hour ago
(submitted 3 hours ago by cakevodka ) things Hitler did were terrible for sure, but, at the same time, it would be intellectually dishonest to not call him a great politician and orator. The fact that he tried to wipe out a couple races and nationalities does not make his achievements in politics and economics any less significant [+66] (reddit.com) -> (1:17 CST) [–]_Pornosonic_ 144 points 7 hours ago
Those combined with the 3 earlier comments I posted make up the last five submissions to /r/shitredditsays(with the exception of one where the original comment was deleted), the first part is the linked comment and the second is the comment score(now with timestamp!)
I can't actually find a single instance from the front page where the score goes down after being submitted. The opposite is usually the case, where the score increases after being posted to SRS
It doesn't matter if it's reasonable or not as long as it isn't ultimately harmful to the person.
If you dox someone or follow them around for a length of time attacking them, you should be banned for it as it creates a hostile environment.
But that is a far cry from telling someone in no uncertain terms that you think their opinion is ridiculous.
Personally, I've been wanting a reddit alternative for a while, but everything out there sucks in some manner (don't get me started on hubski...). I would love for this to push enough people onto the other platforms for the content to be there. I doubt it will, but that doesn't stop me from wishing it would happen.
That's your opinion on it. Reddit, it would appear, has a different opinion. As, I believe, would the admins of Hacker News.
It's actually an anti-spam measure, because when you post while being shadowbanned you see your posts, but nobody else does. That means you could be posting for a long time and not even know all of your posts are actually invisible.
That's not just telling someone to fuck off the site. That's actually erasing them from the site because they won't even make a new account - they'll keep posting and not even know they're invisible.
And it's something that - at the risk of repeating myself - Hacker News also does.
But we have no idea if it was "just criticism", or if it was worse.
Buddy Fletcher, husband of Reddit CEO Ellen Pao, is being described as being the operator of Ponzi scheme
~144 million dollars of a pension fund was lost
Ellen Pao is now accused of frivolous lawsuits to try and stay afloat and some other shit. Seeing as she is a CEO of a large company and has a fraudster for a husband I think it's safe to say we have a textbook ASPD/Sociopath on our hands
As what happened on Reddit last week: http://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/351buo/tifu_by_posting...
It's trivial to detect - literally as simple as seeing if the user page exists when logged out (or just not sending the login cookie).
That they are happening to users at all is evidence of either an unreported change in internal policy or high level vigilante modding. And as users, there is no way to find out how many are affected by this.
Another issue exists where after a person discovers their shadowban, they request its removal and are denied -- because there was no note left for why they were banned. What if it were placed by a Reddit mod and not a sub mod? How could anyone make a reasonable appeal in that case?
Their opaqueness is why shadowbans are effective, but mods treating user appeals like gag orders with top secret clearances is not in the spirit of their duties. After a user discovers their shadowban, it's no longer effective, so there is no reason not to disclose information to them about it during their appeal.
Opening the appeals process so users can see for themselves why they were banned, reversing appeals against noteless bans without contest, limiting the duration of all bans not made against spam/bots, a system of blind review, and increasing mod accountability would all serve to strengthen users' ability to stay active on the site without compromising the intended function of the shadowban.
Selected quotes:
>You will never be told exactly what will earn a shadowban, because telling you means telling the sociopaths, and then they will figure out a way to get around it, or worse, they will file shitty, frivolous lawsuits in bad faith for being shadowbanned while "not having done anything wrong"[...]Shadowbans are intentionally a grey area, an unknown, a nebulous and unrestricted tool that the administrators will use at their sole discretion in order to keep reddit running[.]
The first thoughts that come to my mind are "this isn't compatible with a culture of transparency" and "there has to be a better way" but I can appreciate how hard it must be to keep a site the size of Reddit running.
Of course, this only works well when the overlord behaves in a way that the subjects agree with. As soon as the overlord makes one too many bad calls, the subjects revolt.
Now she won't tell you the rules because like every unprincipled person, she wants to be able to change the rules as it pleases her. That's the type of person she is.
The quotes make her sound like a tyrant. That's what leftists become when they're given any power. I'll watch Reddit go down from far away as I do not want to be in the same website as liar Ellen Pao - she might frivolously sue me.
It maybe worked for meatball wiki but they were i) small and ii) disciplined.
I doubt their approach would work anywhere else.
In theory, this only applies to subreddits where automoderator is installed, but in practice, automoderator is installed on every sub above a certain size simply because it does a lot of cool things.
In essence, a user can be "soft" shadowbanned this way.
Overall I believe a better solution would be to give users the ability to block people. Ideally via a digital fingerprint so people can't just use a fresh username. This would be more inline with an open community in control of its own destiny.
the real challenge will be users attempting to use the system to shut down other subs or posters within. there are some seriously hate filled subs that people do try to get shut down with false claims of reddit rules violations; namely vote manipulation
given they also freely allow multiple accounts will they shut down all accounts they can prove are related? how do they handle multiple accounts on one IP where the users truly are distinct
HN uses it too sometimes. Basically, a hellbanned user doesn’t know they’ve been banned: they can still comment, add submissions etc. The difference is that all their activity is hidden to normal users.
All things must end. Reddit had its day in the sun and maybe it's time for something new to take its place.
The issue with Reddit is why would anyone spend a couple hours writing thoughtful comments when there is some algorithm that just deletes them at random? The obvious answer is they wouldn't. And so by and large the people who used to contribute good content have already left.
I doubt this change will push the site into a death spiral, but in general when rules like this are created then it certainly signals that there probably weren't many obviously better options.
huh? i'm a very active redditor across many subs and i've never encountered anything like that. you're the first person i've ever seen even mention it. unless i'm not understanding what you mean?
It's not even mild disagreements. Most of the subreddits are run like cults. If you look at the mods of the major subreddits, most of them are run by a select few users. The same mods on every other subreddit.
Reddit is used as a propaganda tool now.
/r/skincareaddiction was caught red handed (with a price list, even) offering promotion services.
Those are the big ones I can think of - most of the suspicion comes from the fact that you find a lot of the same people moderating a lot of the same subreddits. It smacks of the cabal.
(Given communities with a few million subscribers, how is one supposed to do their job on a single one of these, let alone multiple?)
It's how we caught which manager was stealing from us and got the evidence that our accountant was funneling money out to herself (although it was noticing when she bought that new car and put her children into an expensive private school that created the suspicion).
I'll go elsewhere once Reddit crashes and burns. Away from the MRAs and SRS. Somewhere where the noise is squelched far from the signal.
In any place I've seen these sorts of gestures of "safe-ification", they seem to serve only to 1. be ineffective; for whatever moderation you have it's going to have edge cases and a time delay for enforcement. 2. Split the community, create _more_ (and often more subtler, now that it has to conform to some rulebook) harassment/drama between the split. 3. Drive away productive parts of the community, for any variety of reasons. (for me it's a mix of "I've seen this pattern before and don't like where it goes" and "I don't agree that trying to dictate social standards is the proper way.")
Caveat, and I'm somewhat frustrated that I feel like I need to say this (whether that's at myself or the fear that I'll be jumped on if I don't), I was _VERY_ heavily bullied/harrassed for much of my childhood.
I caveat as such to try and say that I don't hold this stance from a position of ignorance, but that if I hadn't interacted with bad actors in places that are frankly more insulated from real life (the internet) I would have never come to (yes, painful, but still VERY useful in hindsight) realizations about human interaction and my role in it.
This rambled a bit, so tl;dr, Dealing with bad actors is how we learn to deal with bad actors, which is a _critical_ life skill. This even aside from that the strategy being applied does not have a successful history, from what I've seen. (I'm trying to avoid the slippery slope argument, although that's kinda implicit in my second conclusion, I'd rather hear what other people think on this concept of growth through pain, or if it's all in my head)
In Portugal we have a saying that translates to something like this: "Who is not well/happy, should move to another place". And that's whats going to happen. Some users will go to another platforms.
And, in the end, we'll always have the chans...
Create a safe space to encourage participation.
Embrace diversity of viewpoints.
Allow freedom of expression.
Be stewards, not dictators. The community owns itself.
Embrace all viewpoints.
Allow total freedom of expression.
Embrace some viewpoints.
Allow some freedom of expression.
Therefore, I would say that technically:
Embrace viewpoints.
Embrace all viewpoints.
As for maintaining decorum, that where the restrictions come into play and have to be specifically stated:
Embrace diversity of viewpoints by permitting all
statements that follow community guidelines on language
pertaining to harassment, crudeness, personal attacks,
etc. Any statements may be censored for not following
community guidelines.I guess you can choose to give them more or less credit based on how closely they hew to a pedantic squeezing of the meaning, but my point was that they do not emphasize that they are absolutes (even where simple language is available to do so).
I mean this straight; I'd honestly be interested in hearing an elaboration from them, not as snark about how they can't possibly mean it or something. Again, no sarcasm or snark, high principles are hard.
A safe space for you, if we are at odds, is an unsafe space for me. The concept of a universal "safe space" is an impossibility in that regard.
Only if you are determined to be at odds. It's quite possible for an atheist and a die-hard Christian to get dinner together, if they both commit to focusing on the topics they share rather than the ones they disagree on.
Safe space is just code for coddling the first person to claim offense.
seems like a willful misrepresentation of the aims behind the concept.
Actually, nothing even precludes them from discussing religion. Just because we're wired to get into angry shouting matches on the matters that pertain to tribal identification (which I used descriptively, not perjoratively... human psychology can not be understood until you understand that we are deeply tribal, and religion is a huge component of that) does not mean that we are obligated to give in to those impulses.
It's just... really hard. For everybody. And increasingly, giving in to those impulses is being held up a virtue, rather than vice. This bodes poorly for the future of civil society.
Because as far as I'm concerned safe spaces only promote ignorance, one sided narratives, and echo chambers.
America, during the red scare, was a "safe space" for capitalism. Even so much as agreeing with a socialist or communist idea would get you publicly denounced at the least, and jailed at the most.
Safe spaces are private communities for people who can't handle alternative views.
A site-wide harassment ban is one thing. A site-wide "safe space" is entirely different.
Discussion, yes. Absolutely.
Shouting matches? Not so much.
That's not honest debate.
>seems like a willful misrepresentation of the aims behind the concept.
As a white male I am often told that I'm not allowed to participate in discussions because of my race and gender due to the discussion taking place in "safe space." No matter what the original aims are behind the concept, it is easily corruptible and almost never used in the "best case scenario." It's usually used to set up echo-chambers where individuals can feel safe from criticism or debate. It has no place in a healthy society, IMO.
Who says they have to have an honest debate? Why can't they just have a conversation with each other? That's the problem with battling attitudes - there isn't any reason why the two of them must come to blows about their opposing beliefs. They can simply respect each other and move beyond it.
As a white male I am often told that I'm not allowed to participate in discussions because of my race and gender due to the discussion taking place in "safe space."
Interesting, because as a white male myself I have never been told that. I have been told that my opinion in a conversation is not an important one, which is often (not always!) a valid point. But I have never been told I am cannot participate in a discussion solely because it is a "safe space". Where are you having these conversations?
Why is that?
Why is someone's identity more important than the content of their speech in this particular case?
Is it impossible for anyone/a man to be against sexism and yet disagree with someone's characterization of an event?
Are all ideas sacred and above criticism now, or only some ideas?
Which ones?
Who gets to decide that?
Why them?
Why does the right of people to be free from criticism take priority over the right of people to have a discussion?
Why does mere disagreement necessarily need to be classed as a negative thing (as you just did?)
How can such an environment foster any kind of healthy discussion, as opposed to me-too echo-chambering?
If a group has been marginalized, belittled, and excluded for long enough, it can damage the people in that group. They can need a safe place to heal, to realize that they matter, that they are as worthwhile as anyone else, and that they don't have to be what their oppressors said they were. A safe place can be very important in that process.
Or a safe place can be a place where a bunch that feels oppressed because somebody looked at them funny, and feels more oppressed because nobody else thinks they're oppressed, can get together and rehash their sense of victimhood and exclude anyone who disagrees.
Human nature being what it is, the second is perhaps more likely than the first. But that does not make the first invalid (when genuinely needed).
Classic illiberal progressivism.
Safe space used to be a term for a very small group of people who agreed to be positive and nurturing towards one another no matter what. This is important for sexual assault survivors, closet gays, the heavily marginalized, etc. to have a space in which they can actually speak with other human beings about their experiences. This is, in reality, a very important thing.
However, it doesn't scale well. Some people have thought, "Hey, I like these safe spaces...what if we make everywhere a safe space? Wouldn't that be great?" What they miss is there isn't one universal definition of safe space and you can't just force your definition upon others.
In a very general sense, at the reddit scale, "safe space" means protecting those who need protecting. That means protecting the disempowered, the marginalized, the minorities, etc. from the ignorance and violence of the masses. Protecting them from the hegemonic power of the majority, which means the patriarchy in general and if we're being honest white males in particular.
It sounds good in principle but who is "empowered" and who is "disempowered" isn't an easy question to answer. To make things worse the tools of enforcing a safe space are so powerful that the people fighting against oppression often become oppressors themselves. In the case of reddit there are many members who are openly abusive and believe it's morally justified because they're "punching up" and it's only real abuse when you hurt people lower on the social ladder than you. (As an aside, this a big reason to claim victimhood: once you're a "victim" you get to do things you otherwise wouldn't.)
What to you mean by "Create a safe space to encourage participation".
Define a safe space. I can't physically hurt anyone, so that's a given. But are they considering a "safe space" a place where I can't say anything potentially insulting, offending or hurtful? In that case, I don't have freedom of expression and neither is Reddit encouraging (my) participation.
Maybe the Portuguese version doesn't have those implications, but I find it to be one of the worst arguments a person can make.
You're right that this one is an awful argument because it's not within anyone's power to move to Russia, usually (or otherwise move away from the various laws and regulations that apply to them in the US). However, they absolutely can use a site other than Reddit without problems.
And the problem is not that you can't do it, it's that it's a way of shutting down criticism without addressing it. It's inherently a non sequitur. It basically says, "The problems you point out are not actually problems, because you can go away."
An example: I enter the subway and sit next to a man. For some reason, I stink. The man is unconfortable and asks me to move. I shouldn't move. I am OK where I am. If he's not OK he should be the one moving somewhere else.
I think that probably aligns reddit closer with the USs definition of free speech.
"Hate speech is not free speech" is a remarkably inane statement.
If you are against hate speech, you are against free speech. Opposing free speech is not an unacceptable position however.
A person who supports placing legal limits on expression because they offend a group, religion, political party, etc. can't sincerely claim to be an advocate for free speech. Better to avoid the doublethink and stop defining free speech as speech that you approve of.
The current state of reddit includes a large group going around trying to be offended and then bringing the outrage back to home-base so the group at large can also get that outrage-dopamine kick. For their troubles the person who found the offensive comment or post gets some internet points and their group membership is solidified.
It's fascinating in the sense that it happens but I don't think it's reasonable to lurk in social groups you don't belong to and complain about the local norms.
I think most people are afraid of the slippery slope and censorship if taken too far. Making Reddit "too political correct" would transform the current culture into something else. Many (or a loud minority) currently doesn't seem to trust Reddit to not do that. What makes things worse is people assume this is a "Monetization of a service"-story they've seen played out many times before with catastrophic results.
In the end I guess it comes down to the execution and agenda.
Starting something like this isn't necessarily the death knell, but the inevitable unequal application of it will be.
The incredibly strict anti-trolling policies around HN do make it a great place to come back to years later. Though HN also takes care to engineer the social interactions here too. (scores are hidden, upvotes only until you get to a certain karma level)
I do tend to worry a little about bias and inconsistent enforcement of their policies, but also believe that we'd have to see that play out over time.
Without question the stated goal of "diversity" is noble, valuable and, deserves to be pursued. The problems arise in their definition of diversity. Does it mean what I think it means?
What about their definition of "safe"? We're really going to have to wait and see.
I think calling this the demise of reddit is a bit premature.
Though I also struggle to believe that deleting the extremes will make it a more interesting or compelling place to be around.
There's a reason that maniacs stop taking lithium.
I don't upvote people either.
I believe it is better to elevate good posts/posts that I like, than silencing bad posts/posts that I dislike.
I think there should only be UPvotes.
My guess: the anti-SJW crowd will leave to go to voat (and if we're unlucky, here) and the SJW & neutral crowds will remain, warping reddit into something more along the lines of tumblr with more cat pictures.
On the other hand, even before this recent Pao stuff, reddit had been getting a pretty solid reputation for being an advertising/PR platform. The shilling and advertising is pretty horrendous, and almost all of the default subs are completely overrun by paid content-- if you don't believe me, just take a gander at how frequently McDonalds, Doritos, TacoBell, etc make the front page with content-free posts that are often as simple as a picture of their products.
I guess you can say "avoid the larger subreddits" but there is a lot of content-based shilling too-- try posting anything about Israel or Russia in the context of a serious discussion and see what happens. It isn't a coincidence.
They might as well get rid of the voting system. Reddit is a joke and the sooner it goes away the better.
They're not doing it out of the good of their hearts, so I see three obvious possibilities: making the website a more attractive place to advertize, external pressure hurting their image (like that time they banned some subreddits only after being featured on CNN) or trying to appeal to more women. Did I miss anything?
I assume it's some combination of the above leaning heavily towards advertizement. Considering the number of house ads I see them running, and the anecdotal things I've heard about advertizement sales on 4chan or other uncouth websites.
It's fun to watch parallels develop between reddit site operators versus subreddit moderators, and federal government versus state's rights. (For anyone not familiar with this long-running American political theme: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States%27_rights)
>If we find that you are active in any subreddits that promote hatred toward any particular group of individuals, your participation rights in this sub will be revoked.
And another:
"Mod abuse will not be tolerated"
Those rules have worked for years.
Nice thoughtcrime ya got there.
In point (1) she basically just described how SRS operates...I doubt they'll be willing to use this to punish them, though.
Speaing of SRS, maybe it's time the community starts asking A) how many reddit employees are involved with SRS and B) how many other subs the anonymous* SRS mods also moderate.
*mostly anonymous. It's public knowledge one of their mods used to be a site admin.
What's more inflammatory, ignoring a troll after he happens to find a picture of your children, or aggressively attacking their actions on their medium of choice? Don't feed the trolls.
Sell off the valuable real estate and make the site cleaner for advertisers so that there's less bad PR when one of the uglier subreddits gets critical mass and finds public attention.
It is what you make of it.