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>Moderators have a lot of power to influence conversations on Reddit in non-obvious ways. You had the above quote when I was commenting on your post, but may h

>Moderators have a lot of power to influence conversations on Reddit in non-obvious ways. You had the above quote when I was commenting on your post, but may have edited it out. But I think this line right here is also why reddit is becoming unusable and going downhill fast. Basically, moderators are given way too much power and users have no recourse against mod abuse really. Users can't vote a moderator out for example. Many times, mod abuse is also hidden, so you can't see a log of what they have been removing and hiding. Both of these things would show clear mod abuse in the open, but reddit seems to want to hide this. Moderators should really only have the power to remove illegal stuff or have clear rules linked for each removal or ban. Mods should not be able to turn on "filter" features that auto hide or auto delete posts, as they regularly just use it to target posters or topics they don't like, even if it is still on topic and popular in the subreddit. Also, mods are more and more removing or locking posts mainly because they politically disagree with them. They use excuses or hide this corrupting behavior all the time. Many times a lock posts will be done with a claim "its too hard to keep moderating this post", when reality is they were just removing posts that didn't break rules and were posts the mod simply disagreed with. Add all the above and more and combine it with clear corrupt interests, and you basically ruin what reddit once was. Which was a place to go to free discussion on many topics. It is not longer that. It is just a place where mods basically abuse their power on most subreddits and astroturfing is more and more the norm. Its almost like people forgot their was a an upvote and downvote button. The mods really have no reason removing posts, outside of clear violating posts that may break laws, since the users can choose what they want to see with the upvote and downvote button.

fjabre 6y ago
I couldn't agree with this more. As someone who has gotten to the top of Reddit front page twice with my free (no ads) web app I now cannot. It's all but impossible. Mods are so over protective they will ban you for practically nothing. If you attempt to evade the ban even innocently they will sniff you out. I think Reddit's mod tools are disgusting and foster censorship and make Reddit a more negative and critical place. A new post type as the OP suggests like IMGUR? This point is laughable OP. Good luck getting passed mods. They don't let you do shit like that anymore. Mods rule with an iron fist on Reddit even to the chagrin of their communities. Shame on reddit and its handlers for taking Reddit in this direction. I have since left reddit and only very casually browse it from time to time. Lots of group think. You will get banned simply for disagreeing with mods in some extreme cases. Reddit didn't used to be this way. I had been a user there for over a decade. They so casually banned me it left a bad taste in my mouth. Reddit has gone to the dogs or in this case the mods. It's embarrassing how far Reddit has fallen. I met Steve and Alexis at MIT startup bootcamp. They were awesome. The reddit they created is no more.
- abcdjdjd 6y ago
  I have left reddit mostly at this point as well, with some exceptions with some subreddits. The entire site is garbage at this point and filled with groupthink and mod abuse at this point. I'm curious, what alternative sites have you found at this point, besides this one, that seem to have what Reddit used to be? Or maybe even if it isn't exactly what reddit used to be, at least some good alternative for sites to go to now?
  - detaro 6y ago
    > besides this one You do realize how far from "moderators only remove illegal posts" HN is, and how much that shapes what HN is?
    - fjabre 6y ago
      Yes there maybe some common sense approaches to curating things but Reddit has gone too far IMHO. I think HN is a separate use case than is reddit. Which is why HN will never become Reddit nor does it want to. It's always been a niche site. Even though it's gained quite a bit of notoriety in the last decade. Most people outside of tech circles have no idea what HN is.
      - detaro 6y ago
        It's less of a separate case from a single subreddit in many ways. (although of course a subreddit can't influence a lot of the things that are differently designed on HN, so it's not like you could turn it into one and it'd just work)
- sellyme 6y ago
  > If you attempt to evade the ban even innocently they will sniff you out. How exactly do you "innocently" attempt to evade a ban?
  - fjabre 6y ago
    I created another account. Logged in. Forgot I was logged in on another account. Forgot I got banned in that sub ages ago. But not Reddit. Reddit mods don't forget. Reddit gives them the tools they need to sniff you out. Kinda creepy reddit has become.
antihero 6y ago
I disagree, for small subreddits, mods should have all the power they want to curate and garden and develop their community in the way they see fit. The great thing about Reddit is that if a mod is abusive and most users agree, there's absolutely nothing preventing you starting a new subreddit. Perhaps larger less niche subreddits should have a greater amount of accountability, though, because something like /r/canada can't easily be replaced. With greater power should come greater accountability. Think a sort of public/private model for subreddits.
- fjabre 6y ago
  I disagree. Giving them too much power puts them into power trip mode. And defeats the purpose of reddit: curated content from the userbase. If I wanted to be told what articles to read by a bunch of mods I'd go to CNN or Fox news. Reddit mods should let their communities decide and have most of the power. This is the spirit of reddit. Not auto-bans and IP sniffers. They should only be responsible for removing illegal or threatening content such as doxxing. Mods are very clearly abusing their power. Reddit is alienating some of its core most loyal userbase. And RPAN also sucks while i'm on my soapbox.
  - ranger207 6y ago
    >...curated content from the userbase. The key word there is "curated". Just upvotes/downvotes is not sustainable for quality discussion. It just leads to low quality easy effort content like memes. Moderators are important to keep discussion on track and prevent the sub from becoming a cesspool. Of course, they can and do still power trip, so still a problem.
    - colejohnson66 6y ago
      I don’t think there’s really a good solution here... Anyone can go rogue anytime. Stack Exchange attempts to solve this using three methods: their “reputation” method (gamification), elections, and paid moderators. If you can prove to the community you’d be good, you and a few others are “elected” community moderators (happens once a year?). If you get 10k reputation on a single site, you get access to those moderator tools as well. And for those with less, you get a smaller set of the tools. For example, IIRC, the “close votes queue” is unlocked at 3k(?). It seems to work well enough.
markdown 6y ago
> Moderators should really only have the power to remove illegal stuff or have clear rules linked for each removal or ban. Imagine HN without moderation other than the removal of illegal stuff. You have no idea how hard mods work to keep subreddits on topic and non-toxic. > Its almost like people forgot their was a an upvote and downvote button. The mods really have no reason removing posts, outside of clear violating posts that may break laws, since the users can choose what they want to see with the upvote and downvote button. 70M US citizens voted for Donald Trump. You cannot trust anonymous users to keep a subreddit a decent place.
detaro 6y ago
Plenty of high-quality subreddits are high-quality because they do moderate and don't succumb to the lowest common denominator of more mainstream subs. You'd be killing the IMHO most valuable parts of reddit with that rule.
- abcdjdjd 6y ago
  Sorry, but this argument is the same reason that dictatorships fails endlessly throughout history. Sure, you can make an argument that maybe the leaders (in this case mods) will be benevolent and lead fairly and for the betterment of all efficiently. After all, dictatorships are more "efficient" at getting stuff done than democracy (note, not saying GOOD is done, just more efficient when you don't have to consider others concerns but your own). However, reality is that is never seems to play out that way. Even if it plays out that way for a little while, someone always inevitably joins the higher ranks and abuses that power for their own interests and selfishness. The same reason this fails in countries is the same reason it fails in online communities where the content is community created. Eventually, someone joins the moderator ranks (if they aren't already their) and starts pushing their own agenda when it comes to removing posts or locking posts. I think reddit has crossed over into this stage of things on most subreddits at this point. It is clearly a cultural issue with the admins who seem to encourage this behavior, as well as no way for the user base to have any recourse against this abuse of mod power. Thus, you get endless censorship now on most subreddits now, and no more open discussion on topics where USERS actually get to decide what they get to read or comment on. After all, what is the point of an upvote/downvote button if mods can just override it endlessly and often do?
  - detaro 6y ago
    There are plenty of subreddits that work just fine (I can't say I see moderation issues in most subreddits I frequent, and if I do it's more often "spam gets through"), and if they stop doing so the user base has a trivial recourse: fork and move. (Indeed it's not unheard of for there to be multiple subreddits for one topic, with different levels of strictness regarding content). That alone breaks the dictatorship analogy.
afavour 6y ago
> The mods really have no reason removing posts, outside of clear violating posts that may break laws, since the users can choose what they want to see with the upvote and downvote button. I have to disagree. My counterpoint would be the AskHistorians subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ Admittedly, I'm a history nerd, but it's probably the most interesting subreddit I've found yet. And it's full of deleted comments, because they have a very strict criteria about what can and cannot be posted. The system absolutely works for them. I'm not saying every subreddit should be organised the way theirs is, but I'm glad they are able to do what they do. IMO, transparency is good. By all means make a public log showing what admins have done. But don't limit what they can do.
- fakedang 6y ago
  Thousands of data points suggest GP's claim, and you counter it with one example? /r/AskHistorians is one of the more unique subreddits, in that it has evolved to become what reddit envisioned a subreddit to be. But running counter to that are a thousand other country subreddits, where if you don't hold a hard line (lefty) view to politics, you will get banned. I have seen Labour shills with premium reddit accounts allowed to post content on r/uk that's downright against the rules, but hey, apparently agreeable to the majority of redditors, so it stays. Likewise I just assume that all of the country subreddits are internally influenced directly by political parties themselves. I have seen fake news being spread by all who have a vested interest (such as Armenians during Nagorno Kharabakh on r/Europe) and mods not even lifting a finger. We all know how r/Conservative and r/The_Donald mods just kicked out people who put forward views that were marginal to the rest of the sub. And why do subs like r/Sino, which openly peddle fake news, even exist? IMO reddit site moderators are largely sleeping and only wake up if something hits the newsstands. Moderators should be empowered with the ability to censor and delete/flag comments, and to ban people with repeated infractions. But to ban somebody from a country sub and/or letting mods ban people with one or no infractions, while selectively applying the rules? No way. They should not even get filters imo. If it makes their job harder, then so be it. That being said, one sub that I've found really nicely monitored is the r/casualuk sub. Politics is a strict no no, and they have some sort of bot to filter out such content based on keywords. The mods aren't some silent grandstanding keyboard warriors but people actively involved in the community who actually go so far as to organize real world events.
newacct583 6y ago
> Basically, moderators are given way too much power and users have no recourse against mod abuse really. A statement made on HN, a site with significantly more extensive moderation than all but the most restrictive subreddits. I mean, obviously moderator abuse exists. In fact, reddit has whole subreddits devoted to pointing it out and discussing it! Virtually everyone wants moderation. And, sure, we tolerate some level of abuse as part of that bargain; in the expectation that we always have a large choice of forums. Note that there really isn't much discussion space in the intermedia area between "moderated like reddit" and "open like 4chan". And that's for a reason: any attempt to loosen the moderation valve leads rapidly to a descent into loud-and-viral-but-unsavory content. That's what just happened with Parler, for example.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
intended 6y ago
> almost like people forgot their was a an upvote and downvote button They forgot this within a few weeks of seeing rule breaking behavior. I recently went through some old logs and discussions from 7/8 years ago. People actually talked about how important it was to upvote content and follow rediquette. That discussion died because you have to enforce rediquette and the "honor code" fails when people see that abusing the code goes unpunished. This means that upvote downvote become like/dislike. This logically implies that if you want to make upvotes work, then you need to really prune your community for rule compliance. My favored example of this is badecon. ------------------------ The other issue really fascinating issue is how automation results in better filter bubbles. Before automod, people couldn't ban alt accounts fast enough. Ban bigot_1, and 10 minutes later you would have bigot_2. Until automation, banning was a fools errand. Later, bots could target words, so now your regexes would stop variations of N*er and other coded hate speech - which also meant that you could stop users from using the names of alternate subs. Now this may be a great thing. You ban bigot_2 and he can't speak anymore so he goes to create his own sub, where they say they will be a free speech zone (and vehemently downvote opposing ideas). Of course, these bastions also use the same tools, and they maintain their ideological purity. Leading to the final conclusion - that moderation is innately a question of morals and ethical leadership. Not of technological design.

fjabre 6y ago

I couldn't agree with this more. As someone who has gotten to the top of Reddit front page twice with my free (no ads) web app I now cannot. It's all but impossible. Mods are so over protective they will ban you for practically nothing. If you attempt to evade the ban even innocently they will sniff you out. I think Reddit's mod tools are disgusting and foster censorship and make Reddit a more negative and critical place. A new post type as the OP suggests like IMGUR? This point is laughable OP. Good luck getting passed mods. They don't let you do shit like that anymore. Mods rule with an iron fist on Reddit even to the chagrin of their communities. Shame on reddit and its handlers for taking Reddit in this direction. I have since left reddit and only very casually browse it from time to time. Lots of group think. You will get banned simply for disagreeing with mods in some extreme cases. Reddit didn't used to be this way. I had been a user there for over a decade. They so casually banned me it left a bad taste in my mouth. Reddit has gone to the dogs or in this case the mods. It's embarrassing how far Reddit has fallen. I met Steve and Alexis at MIT startup bootcamp. They were awesome. The reddit they created is no more.

abcdjdjd 6y ago
I have left reddit mostly at this point as well, with some exceptions with some subreddits. The entire site is garbage at this point and filled with groupthink and mod abuse at this point. I'm curious, what alternative sites have you found at this point, besides this one, that seem to have what Reddit used to be? Or maybe even if it isn't exactly what reddit used to be, at least some good alternative for sites to go to now?
- detaro 6y ago
  > besides this one You do realize how far from "moderators only remove illegal posts" HN is, and how much that shapes what HN is?
  - fjabre 6y ago
    Yes there maybe some common sense approaches to curating things but Reddit has gone too far IMHO. I think HN is a separate use case than is reddit. Which is why HN will never become Reddit nor does it want to. It's always been a niche site. Even though it's gained quite a bit of notoriety in the last decade. Most people outside of tech circles have no idea what HN is.
    - detaro 6y ago
      It's less of a separate case from a single subreddit in many ways. (although of course a subreddit can't influence a lot of the things that are differently designed on HN, so it's not like you could turn it into one and it'd just work)
sellyme 6y ago
> If you attempt to evade the ban even innocently they will sniff you out. How exactly do you "innocently" attempt to evade a ban?
- fjabre 6y ago
  I created another account. Logged in. Forgot I was logged in on another account. Forgot I got banned in that sub ages ago. But not Reddit. Reddit mods don't forget. Reddit gives them the tools they need to sniff you out. Kinda creepy reddit has become.

antihero 6y ago

I disagree, for small subreddits, mods should have all the power they want to curate and garden and develop their community in the way they see fit. The great thing about Reddit is that if a mod is abusive and most users agree, there's absolutely nothing preventing you starting a new subreddit. Perhaps larger less niche subreddits should have a greater amount of accountability, though, because something like /r/canada can't easily be replaced. With greater power should come greater accountability. Think a sort of public/private model for subreddits.

fjabre 6y ago
I disagree. Giving them too much power puts them into power trip mode. And defeats the purpose of reddit: curated content from the userbase. If I wanted to be told what articles to read by a bunch of mods I'd go to CNN or Fox news. Reddit mods should let their communities decide and have most of the power. This is the spirit of reddit. Not auto-bans and IP sniffers. They should only be responsible for removing illegal or threatening content such as doxxing. Mods are very clearly abusing their power. Reddit is alienating some of its core most loyal userbase. And RPAN also sucks while i'm on my soapbox.
- ranger207 6y ago
  >...curated content from the userbase. The key word there is "curated". Just upvotes/downvotes is not sustainable for quality discussion. It just leads to low quality easy effort content like memes. Moderators are important to keep discussion on track and prevent the sub from becoming a cesspool. Of course, they can and do still power trip, so still a problem.
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    I don’t think there’s really a good solution here... Anyone can go rogue anytime. Stack Exchange attempts to solve this using three methods: their “reputation” method (gamification), elections, and paid moderators. If you can prove to the community you’d be good, you and a few others are “elected” community moderators (happens once a year?). If you get 10k reputation on a single site, you get access to those moderator tools as well. And for those with less, you get a smaller set of the tools. For example, IIRC, the “close votes queue” is unlocked at 3k(?). It seems to work well enough.

markdown 6y ago

> Moderators should really only have the power to remove illegal stuff or have clear rules linked for each removal or ban. Imagine HN without moderation other than the removal of illegal stuff. You have no idea how hard mods work to keep subreddits on topic and non-toxic. > Its almost like people forgot their was a an upvote and downvote button. The mods really have no reason removing posts, outside of clear violating posts that may break laws, since the users can choose what they want to see with the upvote and downvote button. 70M US citizens voted for Donald Trump. You cannot trust anonymous users to keep a subreddit a decent place.

detaro 6y ago

Plenty of high-quality subreddits are high-quality because they do moderate and don't succumb to the lowest common denominator of more mainstream subs. You'd be killing the IMHO most valuable parts of reddit with that rule.

abcdjdjd 6y ago
Sorry, but this argument is the same reason that dictatorships fails endlessly throughout history. Sure, you can make an argument that maybe the leaders (in this case mods) will be benevolent and lead fairly and for the betterment of all efficiently. After all, dictatorships are more "efficient" at getting stuff done than democracy (note, not saying GOOD is done, just more efficient when you don't have to consider others concerns but your own). However, reality is that is never seems to play out that way. Even if it plays out that way for a little while, someone always inevitably joins the higher ranks and abuses that power for their own interests and selfishness. The same reason this fails in countries is the same reason it fails in online communities where the content is community created. Eventually, someone joins the moderator ranks (if they aren't already their) and starts pushing their own agenda when it comes to removing posts or locking posts. I think reddit has crossed over into this stage of things on most subreddits at this point. It is clearly a cultural issue with the admins who seem to encourage this behavior, as well as no way for the user base to have any recourse against this abuse of mod power. Thus, you get endless censorship now on most subreddits now, and no more open discussion on topics where USERS actually get to decide what they get to read or comment on. After all, what is the point of an upvote/downvote button if mods can just override it endlessly and often do?
- detaro 6y ago
  There are plenty of subreddits that work just fine (I can't say I see moderation issues in most subreddits I frequent, and if I do it's more often "spam gets through"), and if they stop doing so the user base has a trivial recourse: fork and move. (Indeed it's not unheard of for there to be multiple subreddits for one topic, with different levels of strictness regarding content). That alone breaks the dictatorship analogy.

afavour 6y ago

> The mods really have no reason removing posts, outside of clear violating posts that may break laws, since the users can choose what they want to see with the upvote and downvote button. I have to disagree. My counterpoint would be the AskHistorians subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ Admittedly, I'm a history nerd, but it's probably the most interesting subreddit I've found yet. And it's full of deleted comments, because they have a very strict criteria about what can and cannot be posted. The system absolutely works for them. I'm not saying every subreddit should be organised the way theirs is, but I'm glad they are able to do what they do. IMO, transparency is good. By all means make a public log showing what admins have done. But don't limit what they can do.

fakedang 6y ago
Thousands of data points suggest GP's claim, and you counter it with one example? /r/AskHistorians is one of the more unique subreddits, in that it has evolved to become what reddit envisioned a subreddit to be. But running counter to that are a thousand other country subreddits, where if you don't hold a hard line (lefty) view to politics, you will get banned. I have seen Labour shills with premium reddit accounts allowed to post content on r/uk that's downright against the rules, but hey, apparently agreeable to the majority of redditors, so it stays. Likewise I just assume that all of the country subreddits are internally influenced directly by political parties themselves. I have seen fake news being spread by all who have a vested interest (such as Armenians during Nagorno Kharabakh on r/Europe) and mods not even lifting a finger. We all know how r/Conservative and r/The_Donald mods just kicked out people who put forward views that were marginal to the rest of the sub. And why do subs like r/Sino, which openly peddle fake news, even exist? IMO reddit site moderators are largely sleeping and only wake up if something hits the newsstands. Moderators should be empowered with the ability to censor and delete/flag comments, and to ban people with repeated infractions. But to ban somebody from a country sub and/or letting mods ban people with one or no infractions, while selectively applying the rules? No way. They should not even get filters imo. If it makes their job harder, then so be it. That being said, one sub that I've found really nicely monitored is the r/casualuk sub. Politics is a strict no no, and they have some sort of bot to filter out such content based on keywords. The mods aren't some silent grandstanding keyboard warriors but people actively involved in the community who actually go so far as to organize real world events.

newacct583 6y ago

> Basically, moderators are given way too much power and users have no recourse against mod abuse really. A statement made on HN, a site with significantly more extensive moderation than all but the most restrictive subreddits. I mean, obviously moderator abuse exists. In fact, reddit has whole subreddits devoted to pointing it out and discussing it! Virtually everyone wants moderation. And, sure, we tolerate some level of abuse as part of that bargain; in the expectation that we always have a large choice of forums. Note that there really isn't much discussion space in the intermedia area between "moderated like reddit" and "open like 4chan". And that's for a reason: any attempt to loosen the moderation valve leads rapidly to a descent into loud-and-viral-but-unsavory content. That's what just happened with Parler, for example.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

intended 6y ago

> almost like people forgot their was a an upvote and downvote button They forgot this within a few weeks of seeing rule breaking behavior. I recently went through some old logs and discussions from 7/8 years ago. People actually talked about how important it was to upvote content and follow rediquette. That discussion died because you have to enforce rediquette and the "honor code" fails when people see that abusing the code goes unpunished. This means that upvote downvote become like/dislike. This logically implies that if you want to make upvotes work, then you need to really prune your community for rule compliance. My favored example of this is badecon. ------------------------ The other issue really fascinating issue is how automation results in better filter bubbles. Before automod, people couldn't ban alt accounts fast enough. Ban bigot_1, and 10 minutes later you would have bigot_2. Until automation, banning was a fools errand. Later, bots could target words, so now your regexes would stop variations of N*er and other coded hate speech - which also meant that you could stop users from using the names of alternate subs. Now this may be a great thing. You ban bigot_2 and he can't speak anymore so he goes to create his own sub, where they say they will be a free speech zone (and vehemently downvote opposing ideas). Of course, these bastions also use the same tools, and they maintain their ideological purity. Leading to the final conclusion - that moderation is innately a question of morals and ethical leadership. Not of technological design.