[abcdjdjd]

>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.

[afavour]

> 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/

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]

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.

[afavour]

"Thousands of data points" sounds awfully scientific. Can you show me the dataset? Or are you using the word "data" in a more abstract sense here?

I'm not well versed enough to know if what you say about /r/uk or /r/europe is true, but I'm quite sure /r/askhistorians is not the only well run subreddit on the site. You're just picking examples of subreddits you say are badly run and using them as evidence that all other subs should suffer because of them. Doesn't sound scientific at all.

> 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.

You don't see the incoherence in these two statements? It sounds a lot like your actual complaint here is that you don't like perceived persecution of your personal politics, and if moderation doesn't touch that then you have no problem with it at all.

[fakedang]

I was using data in the abstract.

AskHistorians is still a niche sub for history nerds, and is well run, like most of the niche subs. I don't disagree, reddit is my goto for niche topics.

But if you look at all major country subs, or major subs such as politics, news, world news, etc., all are badly run, with a hard bent to the left.

> It sounds a lot like your actual complaint here is that you don't like perceived persecution of your personal politics, and if moderation doesn't touch that then you have no problem with it at all.

Ah, how nice to toss baseless allegations at me. For one, I do stand aligned with most subs' political views. But I also stand for letting the other side state their views politely without demagoguery. I do not agree with subs brigading users who come from a different political shade, and have even taken the hammer from the mods for pointing out their hypocrisy in implementing the same. It doesn't take an idiot to see how neutral country subs have been taken over by a lot of far-left or far-right premium accounts, presumably paid for by party funds (I know a bunch of r/uk mods who are part of Momentum, the far-left branch within Labour, for instance). There isn't a place for centrist leaning folks on reddit anywhere on the main subs.

Not to mention the effective dictatorships that mods run, regardless of political leaning: you call out a mod for partiality and/or bias or bad behavior, instaban.

[tomcam]

A gentle correction. You and I view them as hard left, but they seem to regard themselves as centrists. If I am correct, they feel they are doing a public service. I prefer vigorous debate but they feel that certain views are so destructive that they should not be aired publicly.

[ohgodplsno]

> But if you look at all major country subs, or major subs such as politics, news, world news, etc., all are badly run, with a hard bent to the left.

Not exactly the left's fault if the right on the internet tends to be, you know, literal nazis and people calling for hatred. If /r/Conservative is representative of the average right wing user, yeah, it's normal they're getting banned, as they are absolutely incapable of reasonable discourse.

You also conveniently forget the local subreddits absolutely overrun by the far right. /r/canada was so bad that /r/onguardforthee had to be created. /r/metacanada regularly calls for eugenism. /r/france has the far right coming out of the woods every day.

[fakedang]

In fact, I don't disagree with you. I stated that too, that subs are literally being taken over by either far-right but mostly far-left trolls. I specifically included far-right hijacking to take into account what happened to r/France and r/Canada.

I've seen libertarian folks being hounded out of r/conservative just as much as I've seen centrists being hounded out of r/politics. Not to mention, most comments seem like they were written by people with zero world view, and who haven't gone anywhere beyond a 100 miles from home, regardless of political leanings. Reddit general (I.e. Reddit minus the niche subs), the subs that come on Popular, is basically a diorama of the lowest possible denominator of man.

[antihero]

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.

[ranger207]

>...there's absolutely nothing preventing you starting a new subreddit. Except for discovery. If you want to talk about, say, Python, you'll probably go to /r/python. But what if /r/python's mods start sending the sub down the drain? Go to /r/python2? /r/python3? /r/python_lang? New users are still going to go to /r/python and be sucked into a bad community. If they're really invested in discussing Python, maybe they'll find /r/python_lang, but if they're not they'll just bounce off and the entire community won't grow.

IMO reddit needs namespaces. Back in the beginning, there weren't subreddits, just reddit.com (like HN is now), and as reddit grew they created subreddits to divide discussion. I think it's time for another subdivision. This might work well with their attempts to become more of a people-focused social media company: a person can start a subreddit and appoint their own moderators: /r/ranger207/python would be an entirely different subreddit from /r/antihero/python. This reduces the "default name" problem: if you want to discuss Python and search "python subreddit" you'll get both results. You won't automatically assume /r/ranger207/python is better than /r/antihero/python like you would assume /r/python is better than /r/python_lang. Anyway, that's a big digression...

[intended]

This didn't use to be a problem. Famously people moved out of r/marijuana to r/trees because they had issues with the mod.

This was subreddit splitting/budding. Which has stopped because of automation.

Thats the tradeoff. Automation allows you to moderate and stop the hate speech.

It also means you can stop people from using the name of the new sub, so discovery is stalled.

So even your solution won't stop it, because we can't survive without automod.

Enjoy!

[colejohnson66]

What would happen when that moderator inevitably dies or steps down from a vibrant community?

[dageshi]

Large subs like your r/canada example can and do split. r/unitedkingdom has basically been replaced by r/casualuk in size because a substantial part of its userbase was tired of its constant misery and moaning.

[inopinatus]

> tired of its constant misery and moaning

This reason to depart the UK predates the existence of Reddit by some centuries.

[lovegoblin]

> because something like /r/canada can't easily be replaced.

Yeah. As it became more and more clear that /r/canada was modded by reactionary bigots, a lot of people started moving to /r/canadapolitics and /r/onguardforthee.

[maest]

You still have the issue that r/canada is the default place to go if you're new and want to talk about Canada. To make matters worse, r/canadapolitics isn't advertised on r/canada, so how are new users supposed to find out about it?

[fakedang]

Exactly this! You can create new subreddits as and when you like it, but country subs are the issue. You can't just simply create a new sub when the old subreddit is the default a person visits.

[fjabre]

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]

>...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]

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.

[fjabre]

Paying your mods. There's a novel idea!

Absolutely agree these systems can work when designed the right way. Reddit has designed its system as punitive.

[colejohnson66]

Yep. AFAIK, some of SE’s employees are assigned to work as mods

[detaro]

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.

[p_j_w]

I completely agree. In my opinion, the best subreddits all tend to ban memes or other low effort content, or at the very least restrict them to a weekly thread of some sort. If users were able to vote on mods, the ones that did this sort of stuff would probably all be removed.

[abcdjdjd]

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?

[majormajor]

This comparison is silly since you have a lot more power to leave a subreddit than to leave a country.

If you think most subreddit is being mis-moderated in the same way, across all those different moderators... is it possible the problem lies on your end?

And even then, there seems to be easy recourse: start your own subreddit?

[detaro]

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.

[abcdjdjd]

>That alone breaks the dictatorship analogy.

It does not when you factor in their appears to be power mod users who moderate multiple subreddits and have power over most of the site now. Your assumption also assumes that this isn't a site wide issue and going to another subreddit solves this.

Again, the fact that power user mods exist ruins that claim for you. Also, the fact that this power tripping seems to be a norm across much of the site now also shows this is not the case.

Are there still some subs that don't have this abuse? Yes. But is it clear at this point the model that reddit is using is open for abuse and eventually it seems many (if not most) subreddits eventually fall into this abuse problem? Yes.

[detaro]

> Again, the fact that power user mods exist ruins that claim for you.

It's a far jump from "users who moderate to multiple subreddits" to "have power over most of the site". And if they mod one or multiple subreddits doesn't have much of an impact on other subs they are not involved with.

> Also, the fact that this power tripping seems to be a norm across much of the site now also shows this is not the case.

doesn't mesh with what I'm seeing, so "citation needed" on it being the norm.

[intended]

Well, communities haven't also existed at the scale and pace they do online. Plus in the real world people had to go eat, and could come back with cooler heads. Online you end up seeing that incendiary piece of text and lose your mind all over again.

As someone mentioned elsewhere - like the media and news industry, there is a Gentleman's agreement in moderation to do "good". There are few ways to punish people for breaking that rule.

Subs with strict moderation end up doing "good" for their communities. The measurement everyone lacks is whether the good of creating insular communities is offset by the harm done to the larger ability to share ideas.

And people really can go ahead and try to prove this - the whole corpus of reddit data is available, if you can come up with the toolkit to test this people could put empirical evidence to these questions.

It is also a question on how you can create balancing forces for moderator overreach. However that sounds laughably expensive. Reddit sure as heck would not want to become a court of judgement where bad mods are censured (even though they have to do it every day).

Fact is you need humans to handle humans, and humans are expensive. No one wants to pay, and debugging deception in human interactions is painful.

Far easier to talk about the marketplace of ideas and put a lid on the whole mess.

[prox]

[citation needed] on the most subreddits pushing agenda part.

[vkou]

> Sorry, but this argument is the same reason that dictatorships fails endlessly throughout history.

Dictatorships have been the status quo for the world, for ~98% of recorded history. World history did not begin in 1708, 1776, 1918, or 1920.

Dictatorships fail, but they are usually replaced by other dictatorships.

[intended]

> 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.

[newacct583]

> 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.

[markdown]

> 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.

[fjabre]

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.

[intended]

I love these conversations. As I've said in about 3 other places now - these are the side effects of automation. It didn't use to be like this because it was not possible - and reddit was in many ways MUCH worse. You couldn't ban known bigots or racists because they would be back with an alt.

The presence of harassment and hate speech has a chilling effect on normal users - they aren't here to engage or fight nazism.

Without effective moderation, you will end up with Godwin's law applied to all convos.

But with automation you can ban hate speech! Awesome! You can stop bigotry and harassment! Brilliant!

You can enforce ideological views over your sub and crush dissent - whoops?

No, you cannot escape this conundrum - tools will be misused. The issue then becomes one of ethics and the appropriateness of the force used.

[fjabre]

I'm obviously not arguing for zero moderation. You would trade one Nazi for another. I believe you are incorrect. That's what the downvote button is for.

What good is karma is it's not adhered to? If you can just remove things because you disagree with them?

Perhaps you should read Aesop's fable: The Wind and the Sun. I believe you would have something to learn from this fable about motivating people in the right direction.

[intended]

I addressed what happened to the downvote button elsewhere:

---------

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.

To me this implies that if you want to make upvotes work, then you need to select your community for rule compliance.

[fjabre]

I appreciate that you've framed a logical argument. There is definitely some sound logic in what you are saying.

I think of it a bit differently.

Reddit could have its 10 commandments and adhere to that. That would be clear and transparent and it should apply both to mods and users alike. There should be no cider house rules. A community is given power by its userbase. Mods should respect their userbase more than they do.

Mods can simply not be trusted to be good faith actors. They constantly abuse their power and Reddit enables it. They are encouraged by the (cult)ture there.

Every mod is free to act as they wish and Reddit will support it. They act like bullies is more like it. Do as I say not as I do.

I then take a step back and wonder. Are crowds truly wise? Or are we simply watching groupthink play out at massive scale?

The crowd is not a crowd anymore. It is a herd.

[intended]

I wish this were possible too.

I want to engage with my users and explain things. But look at this conversation, it is going to take me hours to walk through the whole thing with you, and I am luckily a policy/forum history wonk.

I thrive on figuring this stuff out.

Doing this for ALL users who are angry or disagree with our moderation? Goddamn man, this is a volunteer role, and we are already tired from dealing with even worse users.

While you may respect your users as community members, on moderation your knowledge and peoples assumptions diverge far too much. Which means you stop taking them seriously.

It sucks, it creates a wall between users and mods, and a sense of working with lords and ladies. Most mods don’t want it, but its fated to happen.

I honestly urge everyone who is unhappy with moderation to try it out themselves. I think there is no faster way for people to start working on this problem than having their own experience to drive new solutions.

[sellyme]

> 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]

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.

[dwohnitmok]

The whole concept of a ban is to follow a person not an account though... This has been true for every single forum I've ever frequented (including HN). The fact that this isn't always true is due to an (necessarily for both ethical and technological reasons) imperfect implementation.

[fjabre]

It's pretty terrible they would go these lengths to ban an individual for disagreeing with them politically.

The punishment does not fit the crime. I think it's disgusting that they are sniffing out IPs for such low level offenses.

I made no threats. I simply disagreed with the wrong person on r/politics.

[sellyme]

> I think it's disgusting that they are sniffing out IPs for such low level offenses.

Moderators on Reddit have absolutely zero access to IP addresses. You are misinformed.

[abcdjdjd]

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]

> 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]

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]

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)