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Something that is not at all addressed in any seriousness, even though it is probably the most pertinent issue that faces Reddit in particular, especially in so
by JamesSchriver 8y ago
Something that is not at all addressed in any seriousness, even though it is probably the most pertinent issue that faces Reddit in particular, especially in something called a transparency report; is the clear abuse and misuse of both removal of content and banning of user accounts to censor things, usually for political reasons, but often also simply out of convenience or maybe due to conflict of interest, or any other number or reasons. The whole premise of Reddit was public discussion, and today the very notion of the self-moderation and good ideas percolating up and bad ideas being deprioritized through voting is utterly broken as moderators and administrators operate like little feudal lords and wield their control in the most arbitrary manner with rather loose, if any, serious adherence to even their own sub's rules.
There are some rather notable examples of that in the past even though they somewhat escape my mind right now, but I believe there was a case of a moderator using the power to mod in order to suppress mention of some rival product, just as one example. I think there have also been quite notable instances of whole threads just being "nuked" where pages and pages of comments are simply deleted, sometimes due to corporate or even founder ego reasons ... spez
I get that some things, especially illegal things and even things like doxing or real spam need to be removed, but that does not mean that just because something is removed by dictate of mods or admins, it should never ben seen again or invisible to anyone. Make the unapproved thoughts that are not illegal visible to users, maybe even classify them based on the reason for mod/admin flagging, i.e., spam, wrongthink, etc. It would serve to keep mods and admins ethical and accountable and... transparent.
I think it is a rather significant and overlooked issue. Sure you don't want, e.g., one political group being able to spam another, but that doesn't mean that retaining such an event and the comments, just alone for their scientific and historical reasons, is not rather valuable.
There is also another even more significant reason, the pareto effect, which would indicate that it is far more likely that the one outlier solution is snuffed out because the conventional thinking deemed it as an unacceptable outlier and snuffed the account or user out. Think of those who opposed the Iraq war or even the Afghan war, or warned about the tech or housing bubbles, or any number of people who warned about the things that were obvious in hindsight, but the conventional thought persecuted before it became painfully obvious.
When you start digging into the details of this phenomenon, it is quite unsettling actually just how likely it is that the spark of genius we are all hoping for regarding any particular matter under consideration, may have been snuffed because it or the person that could have provided the solution was declared an personal non grata and were essentially put in a digital concentration camp or buried in a digital mass grave of accounts, executed by some fanatic moderator or administrator that did not tolerate wrongthink or free speech as ever broader rubrics of language are falling under ever harsher persecution.
Just think of all the outliers that have produced essentially most major discoveries, now imagine if they had been making their controversial points today in a forum. They would have been shunned and immediately shadow banned, fully banned, or summarily had their voice snuffed out in any number of ways, maybe even just by one moderator or administrator with a dictatorial chip on their shoulder with far more control and power than any one person should have over another person's voice and speech ... no matter how much you are self-convinced that they are wrong and you are right and therefor no one else should be able to hear what you don't approve of.
That applies to this forum too by the way. I know, this is the dominion of the technocratic elite demigods and wrongthink will not be tolerated from mere inferiors, but just think about it all for a second ... if you even get to see this point being made and some mod hasn't deemed it unacceptable for others to see. But you wouldn't have ever known that it was even made, because there would be no trace of it, on orders of the mod executioner.
- sctb 8y agoOn this site you can enable 'showdead' in your profile.