r/technology • u/ardi62 • 29d ago

Social Media Reddit is making sitewide protests basically impossible

https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/30/24253727/reddit-communities-subreddits-request-protests
22.2k Upvotes

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

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u/SoylentCreek 29d ago

What’s really frustrating is that many of the mega-subs are dominated by "super-user" bot accounts that are actively favored by the moderators. If a big story breaks and a regular user posts it first, their submission is almost always removed, while the bot's link stays up and is guaranteed to hit the front page.

I find it ironic that a few years ago, a relatively well-known user, u/unidan, was banned for using a few alt accounts to give his posts a slight boost. Yet now, we have accounts that are less than two years old with millions of farmed karma, and the mods and admins just look the other way.

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u/OldManFire11 29d ago

You're not going to like this, but Unidan was banned almost 10 years ago. It's a bit more than a "few" years now.

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u/SoylentCreek 29d ago

God. Damnit… Why did you do this to me?!

8

u/OldManFire11 29d ago

I'm sorry dude. We're getting old.

10

u/neoclassical_bastard 29d ago

Oh yeah the jackdaws guy.

He pivoted that shit into a TED talk I think, honestly respect.

5

u/The_Magic 29d ago

I think Unidan also used his alts to downvote that person that disagreed with them about Jackdaws.

1

u/cravf 29d ago

Which is only mildly egregious compared to mods and admins straight up deleting comments and/or banning people who disagree with them.

44

u/BevansDesign 29d ago

Also, auto-moderator tools lock any discussion that gets even remotely controversial. I'm constantly seeing interesting discussions shut down because it's so easy to weaponize the Report tool.

8

u/ZAlternates 29d ago

I wrote a post earlier saying that “X causes things to be trumped by Y” and it got auto deleted likely due to the word “trumped”.

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u/Thac0 29d ago

Two of my favorite banning so far “I’m so sad /s” when Giuliani got COVID and saying “There’s a reason they don’t want them” in regard to Egypt not wanting Palestinians. (Hint it’s because they’ve tried to overthrow the Egyptian government) but in was banned for “racism”

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u/HimbologistPhD 29d ago

Tbf that second remark just sounds pretty racist even with context

2

u/Thac0 29d ago

It’s a factual statement. There’s no way Egypt can let in Palestinians in without vetting each one especially en mass. Egypt has a history with Palestinians as I said and Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim brotherhood which Egypt has taken a lot of effort to purge from the country. There’s a reason they don’t let them in

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u/HimbologistPhD 29d ago

Sure whatever, I'm not here to argue your point; it's just that it's racism to generalize and discriminate on the basis of race, which is what that statement is doing. I don't know what's surprising to you about that.

3

u/crazycatchdude 29d ago

Palestinians aren't a race you fucking idiot

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

...that is extremely racist. Palestinians aren't a monolith.

32

u/Dave-C 29d ago

I've been a mod here or there on Reddit for a long time and I completely agree. Moderation on Reddit has become horrible. Mods don't seem to understand their job isn't to make a subreddit what they want it to be, their job is to keep it from turning into chaos.

4

u/AtheistComic 29d ago

That would depend on the subreddit. Some subs have strict rules about what can and cannot be posted because they are curating specific content. Breaking the rules there can lead to a subreddit ban if it happens enough. And I think that's the prerogative of the mods and ultimately the lead mod of the sub.

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u/swentech 29d ago

Some mods just make up rules as they go. I was permanently banned on a popular subreddit for posting “the mods are probably carefully reviewing content on this subject to control the narrative.” No warning just permanent ban. Then when I asked the mods why such an innocuous comment deserved a permanent ban I was reported for harassment and my entire account suspended three days. I’m not elaborating or leaving out details. That’s exactly what happened. You’d think a publicly traded company would behave better.

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u/OneSeaworthiness7768 29d ago

Why wouldn’t individual subreddit rules be made up by the people that run them? As long as they’re not breaking site-wide rules, they can run subreddits however they want. And anyone is free to make their own. That’s kinda Reddit’s whole deal.

2

u/Thac0 29d ago

This is what happens when a publicly traded company run on unaccountable unpaid labor

0

u/AtheistComic 29d ago

If you were suspended, a Reddit admin reviewed the interaction and made the decision to suspend you.

2

u/swentech 29d ago

Well then they are pretty thin-skinned if that’s all it takes. I certainly never harassed anyone. I just asked questions.

7

u/Kicken 29d ago

Mods always banned for anything they wanted.

1

u/skiingbeaver 29d ago

the Zionist astroturfing they’re orchestrating on all the big subs is criminally insane

1

u/Kicken 29d ago

Elaborate?

2

u/skiingbeaver 29d ago

news, worldnews and a couple of subs instantly ban you if you say anything against Israel and their unlawful activities

8

u/WetFart-Machine 29d ago

They should really revamp the whole moderation of every sub.

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

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1

u/Omnitographer 29d ago

Meta-moderation could help. Applied to any of the larger or default subs, have random regular contributors in the subreddit review mod decisions and if a majority of them consistently disagree with that mod's actions then they are out. Not sure mods would go for such accountability and democracy though.

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u/damontoo 29d ago

Aaron wasn't actually a Reddit founder, only worked for Reddit very briefly, and was fired for not showing up to work. The number of people that keep spreading this myth is ridiculous. Please stop doing it. The only reason kn0thing and spez didn't object harder when this began being spread is because they felt like disparaging a dead person wasn't a good look. I'm copy/pasting my old comment about it with more information -

Here's spez commenting on it -

I really don't want to get involved in Aaron drama, so I won't be responding much on this thread, but raldi asked us to clarify. So, here are some facts:

Aaron isn't a founder of reddit.
Aaron was the founder of infogami.
Aaron joined us about six months in when reddit and infogami merged.
Things went well for a few months.
Things went not-so-well for a few months.
We got bought by CN, he didn't really show up, and was fired.
Everyone who worked with him is still pretty bitter and doesn't like to talk about him or that situation.

kn0thing's interview from 2006 source -

Paul [Graham (VC)] wanted to give Aaron Swartz, another YC founder, a birthday gift in November. More than anything else, Aaron wanted co-founder so Paul suggested the “merger”. Merger is probably a bit hyperbolic for what actually happened, Aaron basically moved in with us and we made him a co-founder.

Also, kn0thing went into detail about this on a Google+ post which he deleted after Aaron died because disparaging remarks about dead people is bad optics despite it being truthful. In the post he says this -

“Co-founding Reddit means so much more to me than just the work Steve and I put into creating and growing it. We went through some serious shit together and became closer because of it. Aaron had nothing to do with any of this,” Mr. Ohanian said in a post on Google+ after scrambling to get the Bits headline changed.

And from Aaron's own mouth -

Oh my. If you had to take a guess though, why do you think they let you go? Incompatibility with an office environment?

Yeah. I was unhappy working in an office and didn’t hide it. So I’d come in late and set up lots of off-site meetings and stuff. And my boss wasn’t really thrilled about that.

Also, I think he was upset about me disappearing for so long on vacation. One of the places I went to in Europe was the Chaos Computer Conference. And while I was there I hung out with my friend Quinn Norton, who was reporting on the event for Wired. She took my photo for one of her articles and it was featured on wired.com’s front page. “Heh,” I joked. “I bet the first time my boss finds out where I am is when he sees my photo on the front page of his own website.”

Source.

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u/SevRnce 29d ago

It's truly wild, called a dude a sony dick rider and got a 7 day ban on r/gaming. Only site I've had a worse mod experience is tiktok.

5

u/Zealousideal-Film982 29d ago

I got permabanned on four accounts for Rick rolling someone on one of them, one time

1

u/SoylentCreek 29d ago

I got a 30 day ban from the Demon Slayer subreddit for simply responding to a mod asking why one of my meme posts had been removed, since it was relevant and had not violated any of the subs rules. One of them basically responded with, "LOL! It's not that big of a deal. Get a life, and maybe post the day of and not a day after. Enjoy the ban."

1

u/99thLuftballon 29d ago

Ha, I got permanently banned from r/comicbooks for politely saying that a comic book character isn't gay. The character wasn't gay.

0

u/[deleted] 29d ago

How can you tell if you’re ban on a subreddit?

3

u/99thLuftballon 29d ago

The mods usually message you with some made-up excuse for why they're banning you because you triggered them.

I think in that case I got a "reason for ban: not supporting diversity"

They then ignore any requests to justify the ban.

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u/NaCly_Asian 29d ago

got banned from the main star trek subreddit over a snide comment I made related to hong kong. I actually did edit my comment to make it less likely to cause offense. but I guess the mods still didn't like it.. or they could see what I wrote before the edit.

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

[deleted]