[jedberg]

I think the author doesn't understand that reddit mods don't work for reddit. In their discussion with the mods they mention "site-wide rules" which makes me think they don't understand that the mods of each reddit make their own rules.

On that sub, their rules don't allow people who mostly post links to their own site. It's up to you if agree with their rule, but those are the rules they have chosen.

The common response is "if you don't like the rules make your own subreddit". Unfortunately that doesn't scale very well, especially if you're trying to replace a popular subreddit.

Of course the simple workaround here is that OP shouldn't be posting their own content anyway. The should send it to a friend who can post it if they think it's interesting.

Posting your own content if you aren't already an engaged member of the community is like walking into a room and shouting "hey everyone I have something you might like!". That's why there is leniency for active members of a subreddit to post their own things.

For people who are saying "thankfully HN is different!", it really isn't. It's basically the same as a subreddit run by the mods here. I personally like the way the mods run things here, which is why I participate here more. But at the end of the day it's just a different set of humans with a different set of rules (and a little bit more control since they can do things on the server that reddit mods can't). And on this "subreddit" they allow people to post their own content if it's relevant, similar to a lot of other subreddits that aren't /r/moviedetails.

[operatingthetan]

>For people who are saying "thankfully HN is different!", it really isn't.

Yes it is. HN's moderation is run by HN. The rules are applied consistently because there are are no third party mods or rules. People know what to expect and that builds community better.

You don't have to wonder if some edgelord mod is going to get home from school and delete your post based on their mood.

[jedberg]

I think you missed my entire point then.

> HN's moderation is run by HN

No, it's run by a few humans.

> The rules are applied consistently

Yes, because those humans are awesome and consistent.

> because there are are no third party mods or rules.

That's not why reddit is different. It's because a lot of the humans that run the subreddits are inconsistent.

But some run their subreddits just like HN.

If you think of HN as a well run subreddit it makes more sense.

[operatingthetan]

>No, it's run by a few humans.

Dang is employed by HN.

>That's not why reddit is different. It's because a lot of the humans that run the subreddits are inconsistent.

You're disagreeing and then saying something that isn't appreciably different.

[tptacek]

Dan is HN. The analogy to a subreddit is good; Dan has in fact much more control over HN than a moderator does of a subreddit.

[operatingthetan]

YC has a vested interest in keeping the HN moderation a certain way, it bring a certain quality to the discourse but it's different than the structure of any sub.

Dang has a direct relationship with the owners of the site and responsibility to them, that relationship doesn't exist in any way on reddit. The mods run amok.

Suggesting HN is effectively just another subreddit dismisses several important differences.

[tptacek]

No, I don't think that's how HN works at all. Dan can in fact run amok on HN. I don't believe there are significant pressures from YC on how Dan structures moderation here.

People unfamiliar with the setup here tend to think about YC first when they think about its management, but they should think about Dan first. My understanding is that things are pretty hands-off; even the perks that YC companies get here are, I believe, pretty much things Dan decided to give them.

[numpad0]

Dang might be well-intended kind dictator, but he’s no machine. He’s just a very thoughtful and kind person with human limits and capacities.

[tough]

DanGPT won't have those limitations

[goatlover]

What about when DanGPT hallucinates a violation?

[OrvalWintermute]

Dang is a member of a specific community. Consequently, even if well intentioned, he is likely to share their cognitive biases and perspectives.

I think this is why we won't have great transparency around banning, shadowbanning, or a check on the censorious power of flagging.

[NotPractical]

I imagine that (thoughtfully) moderating a site as large as HN is no easy task, and though I'm all for more transparency, I think logs like that have the potential to open a whole can of worms and add much more burden on Dan. All of a sudden you get a bunch of HN posts that solely exist to criticize Dan's decisions which clog up the feed. If a rule is added against this it looks like even more censorship.

Lobsters [1] has mod logs, but it also has a much smaller community, and it's invite-only so there's less need for moderation in the first place.

[1] https://lobste.rs/moderations

[ecf]

> No, it's run by a few humans.

And those humans work for HN. Hence, content moderation is run by HN.

[waboremo]

You are still incorrectly comparing. The equivalent to HN in Reddit world is a single subreddit. When you compare a single subreddit to HN, you see there aren't many differences at all, a single set of rules being applied as the mods intend.

[operatingthetan]

>a single set of rules being applied as the mods intend.

Perhaps you haven't had as much moderator interaction as I have, but this is not the case whatsoever. Some subs will have 30-100 mods and each will apply the rules differently per their own interests or pet peeves.

[TeMPOraL]

Well, then let's qualify HN as a mid-sized subreddit with a mostly well-behaved subscriber group and bunch of tricks (such as non-trendy UI) that reduce moderation load, making it possible for a single person to handle it.

Point being, comparing HN to Reddit is a category error; HN is in the same class as subreddits. This is less about HN and more about Reddit itself: Reddit is not a community, it's a network of communities on a common platform. Each subreddit is its own reality.

[bartread]

Sure, except that's not actually the case at all.

I don't know if dang is the only HN moderator, but even if he's not I've never seen any evidence of anyone in that role here just capriciously remove or lock discussions in a way that's absolutely commonplace on Reddit.

There are subs on Reddit that I simply no longer engage with because I'm sick of dimwit edgelord mods locking discussions whilst I'm typing out a contribution even though there's nothing wrong with either the original post or the discussion. There's no sense of consistency in the way the sub rules are applied in each of those subs.

A few weeks ago on the CasualUK subreddit one of the mods went off the deep end and started hurling insults left, right, and centre, and banning people simply for politely calling out their poor behaviour. That mod's conduct absolutely violated the rules of both the sub and Reddit as a whole. It's not OK and, again, it wouldn't happen here.

[strken]

It would be interesting if a subreddit actually paid its frontline moderation staff, and hired them via a board that didn't have mod responsibilities itself. I wonder if any of them have tried?

[Sebb767]

Most importantly: HN is moderated by payed moderators, which are hired and selected to do a good job here. They are still humans and fallible, obviously, but it's a far cry from "random dude that started a community in his free time".

[riffic]

paid

there's a great reddit bot that explains that "payed" is a sort of nautical term.

[favaq]

That's not correct. Users can "moderate" by flagging comments, which hides them. dang rarely undoes a flag.

[operatingthetan]

Sure, but that further bolsters my point that HN is in fact different.

[none_to_remain]

At this point Reddit mods look like unpaid employees to me. This was not the case say, 10 years ago, when Reddit admins enforced the sitewide rules and mods did their own thing. Now Reddit depends on mods to enforce the sitewide rules, instructs them in their work, removes them if their work product is not up to snuff, and I've even seen them demand minimum staffing levels be met.

[lawgimenez]

I’m one of the mods of a subreddit with over 50K subscribers and all I could say is that it is very tiring. And, looking to quit being a mod.

People just can’t read or won’t read the rules. One thing I hate most is that YouTubers high jacking or spamming without even engaging the community or in the comments. It’s so frustrating to keep removing it.

[flangola7]

Reddit is several orders of magnitude larger than it used to be. Managing a social gathering of 500 people has qualitative differences from managing a gathering of 5 people. Strategies that are beneficial at the small scale might not work or even have negative effects at the large scale.

[daveoc64]

>In their discussion with the mods they mention "site-wide rules" which makes me think they don't understand that the mods of each reddit make their own rules.

They're referring to the 10% guideline that many subreddits follow:

You should submit from a variety of sources (a general rule of thumb is that 10% or less of your posting and conversation should link to your own content), talk to people in the comments (and not just on your own links), and generally be a good member of the community.

https://www.reddit.com/wiki/selfpromotion/#wiki_here_are_som...

[jseliger]

I noticed the moderator problems on Reddit many years ago: https://jakeseliger.com/2015/03/16/the-moderator-problem-how..., but I also observe that, since then, Reddit appears to have become much more popular. So maybe the structure is good enough.

[swayvil]

The system meets 2 criteria. It's cheap. It fosters advertising.

[parsoj]

hmm - I didn't get that read about the author at all.

In fact the whole premise of the article (comparing moderation policy differences between different subreddits) - would suggest they totally understand that reddit moderators aren't all pulled from one homogeneous pool of employees.

I think the "site wide" bit was actually brought up by the moderator - referring to the fact that the /r/moviedetails moderation checks your full post history across all of reddit (not just your behavior on /r/moviedetails) and bans you from their subreddit based on that.

[winternett]

Everyone wants everyone else to just watch them make the money and play video games in reality... They don't want to have to watch anyone else playing and winning at them... This is the main reason why large-scale moderated communities always become corrupted... And also why algorithms always will get corrupted too.

[Sunspark]

Don't be so sure that some of the mods don't work for Reddit. Some of them are powermods modding multiple large subs in the millions of subscribers, and they seem to be able to get their way instantly with anything they want. Pretty lucky of Reddit to have people who can mod multiple huge subs for years for "free". Not only that, but Reddit wants to do a public IPO to raise more money. So let's see how that's going to go with the investors.. "we have vAlUe FoR tHe ShArEhOlDeR by not paying staff, but these are capricious little creatures who we have no idea who they are and they have control over user engagement and the user experience but don't worry about it". How well is that going to go? Not very well. At the very least, it'll be required to be published in the financial statements how much of the Reddit budget goes to PAY mods, and this will finally put an end the oft-repeated claim that all the mods are volunteers.

I hope the supreme court takes away section 230 from these people. They have abused their power so much by permanently banning people who simply have an opinion that is not the same as theirs, that they deserve to lose it.

[tptacek]

People are entitled to run their own private sites in ways that restrict you from sharing your opinions that are not the same as theirs. The view of the law that you're espousing is one where, simply by dint of letting people sign up to a service you run, you take on an obligation to carry their messages. That's an intense amount of authority to give the government over private enterprise, and a stultifying precedent for anyone who wants to stand up a site of their own.

Get a blog.

[brhsagain]

Calling sites like Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, etc "private sites" is a bit of an intuition pump, even if the terminology is legally correct. You're basically evoking an image of Bob's Diner where a guy runs a restaurant and kicks out rowdy patrons. The story changes when these websites are massively popular, have majority market share in their space, have taken massive amounts of funding, etc. Any successful social network is also almost by definition a pseudo-monopology (I'm using this word loosely, not legally) simply due to the massive advantages you get from network effects. Reddit is pretty much the first place people go to start and join niche communities of likeminded people. You can say "go start your own website" but now you are competing with, well, Reddit. The basic counterargument to what you're saying is that possession of that kind of market-leader advantage should come with some level of responsibility.

> The view of the law that you're espousing is one where, simply by dint of letting people sign up to a service you run, you take on an obligation to carry their messages. That's an intense amount of authority to give the government over private enterprise, and a stultifying precedent for anyone who wants to stand up a site of their own.

Couldn't you use this formulation to say that anti-discrimination laws make it so that, simply by dint of providing a service, you take on an obligation to provide that service to everyone? That's an intense amount of authority to give the government over private enterprise, and a... you get it. We accept government intervention when we believe it benefits society. The argument being made here is that it would benefit society if these massive pipes of information that in practice everyone uses were similarly regulated in the types of discrimination they can engage in.

There's a calculus to be made about what level of control platforms having over their content would best serve the interests of society. It might be that despite all the things I listed above, the result of that calculus remains the same, but it is not immediately obvious that that is the case, as your "private sites can do what they want" formulation would have one believe.

[yellowapple]

> The story changes when these websites are massively popular, have majority market share in their space, have taken massive amounts of funding, etc.

Not really. The only substantial change is that getting thrown out of such a large and all-encompassing diner is a lot less convenient. The fundamental reality is still there: no website (maybe unless it's owned by your government, and even then) no matter how large is obligated to carry your message, and it is increasingly affordable and trivial to start your own website if other websites exercise their inherent rights of refusal to carry your message.

> Couldn't you use this formulation to say that anti-discrimination laws make it so that, simply by dint of providing a service, you take on an obligation to provide that service to everyone?

The obligation is to not make membership in a protected class or lack thereof a condition of providing a service. Bob can't throw you out of his diner on the basis of you being some race he doesn't like; he can nonetheless throw you out if you're shouting advertisements at everyone else in the diner. Same deal for a website. There is no implication there of any obligation to serve everyone: only an explication of constraints on the reasons someone can refuse to serve someone.

Marketers are, in short, not a protected class.

[brhsagain]

I know that that is the current state of the law. I’m not disputing that there is currently no legal framework to force Reddit to allow content.

I’m arguing the “ought” rather than the “is” here. I disagree with the philosophical stance that simply because Reddit is a private website, they are entitled to control the content as they want and that no level of qualitative difference between Reddit and the average website is enough to change this.

In general, we regulate private enterprise when it has negative externalities on society, and I think there is a discussion to be had about what those externalities are here. I don’t think “private companies can do whatever they want” is a sharp enough tool to engage this issue with.

[johnnyanmac]

>I’m arguing the “ought” rather than the “is” here. I disagree with the philosophical stance that simply because Reddit is a private website, they are entitled to control the content as they want and that no level of qualitative difference between Reddit and the average website is enough to change this.

I disagree on a philosophical level. the rules and users may be frustrating, but in the grand scheme of things, reddit isn't breaking the law nor spreading hate (well, no more hate than your average internet user. We're not talking about Infowars here). I see no reason for government interference on basis of their moderation and curation, like this thread is suggesting.

>In general, we regulate private enterprise when it has negative externalities on society, and I think there is a discussion to be had about what those externalities are here.

Sure, but I honestly can't think of any societal effects that wouldn't be felt from regular old physical analogs that is "people talking and arguing with each other".

- You can talk about groupthink, but that happens IRL and can be taken to an extreme with cults. Cults aren't illegal until they break other laws. - You can talk about restricting artistic freedoms, but said freedoms aren't really that protected in the world at large. - you can talk about freedom of speech and fall into the same conservative trapping as other groups. Convinently forgetting that those freedom of speech is meant to protect government from censoring your speech, not other individuals. - there are privacy concerns which are already being addressed. That's one of the few analogs not easily transferrable to the physical world. - Then there is the anonymity aspect of reddit, which has its share of issues caused ever since the days of "bathroom writings". There are plenty of ways to be offensive without yelling it in someone's face.

I just don't see an angle here that would justify a need to "anti-trust" the site as some public good and force all posts to remain up, nor clamp down and enforce civility in a website.

[yellowapple]

In that case, this hinges on whether websites having the right to moderate themselves as they see fit does indeed have negative externalities on society - and, even if so, whether those negative externalities outweigh the harm of dictating how websites moderate themselves. Perhaps we differently value the rights to speech, press, and association - all of which such a regulation fundamentally infringes.

Notice that I ain't mentioning corporations or individuals here, because that piece fundamentally does not matter; an individual could create a website used by billions, and a corporation could create a website used by a single person (not to mention that there are countless organizational structures beyond just corporations - especially once you go beyond the constraint of what's legally recognized). What matters is the size of the audience, and "you have such and such rights unless you're popular enough to have any tangible influence on society at which point the State will dictate what you're allowed to say or not say" doesn't sit well with me.

[swayvil]

But when you have 1000 people having a conversation there, it literally is not a private site.

[tptacek]

When the 1001st patron at Philips Crab House in Ocean City is seated, the Crab House does not suddenly become publicly owned or operated.

[lmm]

Maybe it should. There are plenty of similar laws (e.g. when you sell shares to your 2001st investor you're suddenly subject to a much stricter disclosure regime, and this is widely considered a good thing).

[tptacek]

That law is an OTC anti-fraud measure. The Constitution has something to say about the ability of Congress to nationalize and impose its own speech controls on private websites that happen to become popular. Congress also doesn't get a say in who performs the Super Bowl Halftime Show, despite its immense audience.

[ilyt]

Do they have moderators running around telling people what they can't talk about ? No ? Then it is public enough

[tptacek]

I assure you that the crab house has rules.

[Sunspark]

Sorry, but if you have control over 5, 10, 20+ million subscribers, it's not your own private site. You're either a paid employee or you're a freeloader riding on someone's carriage, in which case they should be paying Reddit for allowing them a platform and bandwidth in which they can shape and control the narrative by controlling what speech is allowed.

It goes beyond just controlling the speech or opinions of people who disagree with you such as I am doing here, there is also money involved such as in controlling which links get published. Those links drive traffic to specific sites which host ads. Surely you do not believe that all the links to specific sites over and over is simply because they are "fast to publish" or something do you?

[tptacek]

No, that's not a thing, we don't nationalize websites because they become popular.

[johnnyanmac]

>Some of them are powermods modding multiple large subs in the millions of subscribers, and they seem to be able to get their way instantly with anything they want.

they don't work for reddit, it's even worse than that. They are very profitable for reddit despite not being employed so admins look the other way. That work they do may or may not be monetized in other such ways.

>I hope the supreme court takes away section 230 from these people

that's slashing your face to spite the zit. There are undoubtedly unfair moderation practives, but the implications of 230 go far beyond that.

Also, even if I agreed with 230, the issue of international boundaries will make it hard to enforce. No one's going to extradite some kid in brazil because they banned an American user on r/Art over an accusation that the American's art was AI. And that's even before going into how hard it is to win a Libel case in the US.

[monksy]

You have now been banned from r/pyongyang