Both Reddit's admins and their future-employee mods are completely out of control, in a way that makes Facebook's intentional topic manipulation seem tame by comparison. These people go out of their way to ban people for no reason -- constantly, every single day -- in a way that can only be described as intentionally abusive. They appear to get some kind of sadistic pleasure in reading ban appeals and denying them, knowing full well that the bans are improper and the appeals are justified.
In fact, they make a point of not properly responding to reports of harassment (including the sexual proposition of minors), but they will permanently ban well-known and popular accounts that never broke a single rule. They'll even ban people directly out of spite, or because they disagree with you. There is nothing too petty for them.
They're even swindling advertisers in the most brazenly shameful way, and they've been banning live streamers to protect the lie[1].
Ultimately, Reddit's strategy is to simultaneously file their IPO and switch the design to be a TikTok clone with a web3 component attached to the awards system. They're going to tank rapidly, but it doesn't matter to them because they already got paid.
The bans were a way to prevent rocking the investor boat until the IPO, but they got caught up in it, and now it's going too far.
This is very true and it is already having an effect. The amount of posts in the development sub reddit has declined so much it is borderline dead. For example the front page of r/javascript is mostly days old posts which means I can visit it once a week and not really miss anything and it has 1,873,376 subscribers! It seems people have recognized that the post quality was garbage and moved on to greener pastures. It truly is the end of an era. I got banned from r/webdev because some said "using PHP is stupid" and I replied "that is ignorant and that the comment itself was stupid" and I got banned for that and I never looked back.
I’ve been using Reddit since the beginning, and I still use and like it, but your ban for saying “using php is stupid” comment resonates. One of my biggest Reddit pet peeves is downvoting or punitive mod action in response to subjective opinions.
It’s not a new problem, and it’s one that can happen in any forum with downvoting, but it drives me nuts. The downvote is not a disagree button!
The downvote button is Reddit's second biggest problem. It was meant to signal that a piece of content was either off-topic or broke a rule, as a way to alleviate the pressure of moderation. That's a fine theory, but it's simply not possible in an anonymous and unaccountable environment. It increases the trolling and makes it easy for bad actors to both control competitor content and promote their own.
> The downvote button is Reddit's second biggest problem. It was meant to signal that a piece of content was either off-topic or broke a rule, as a way to alleviate the pressure of moderation.
That seems inaccurate. The up/down arrows feed the "hotness" algorithm, and it was never a means of moderation, but does have a side effect similar. You're probably confusing "curation" with "moderation". I can tell you with high confidence, being a mod of several big sub-reddit's, that I give zero-fucks about the up or down votes given to any item in the moderation queue.
Further more, the actual numbers for up/down votes is fuzzed by reddit, intentionally misreported to sabotage those who try to game the system. They mess with the feedback loop, making it harder to vote brigade.
> The up/down arrows feed the "hotness" algorithm, and it was never a means of moderation, but does have a side effect similar. You're probably confusing "curation" with "moderation".
That's not true. Downvoting[1] is absolutely intended to be a way to alleviate moderation duties, so that off-topic or inappropriate posts are made less visible and the moderators don't need to micro-manage every single comment.
> Further more, the actual numbers for up/down votes is fuzzed by reddit, intentionally misreported to sabotage those who try to game the system. They mess with the feedback loop, making it harder to vote brigade.
The vote fuzzing doesn't actually stop brigading at all. If it did, there wouldn't be any, yet everyone acknowledges that the vote gaming is ubiquitous and constant. Bad actors don't care about the numbers Reddit is reporting to them -- they vote until the desired effect is achieved, not until some standardized number of votes is hit.
"Vote. If you think something contributes to conversation, upvote it. If you think it does not contribute to the subreddit it is posted in or is off-topic in a particular community, downvote it."
"Think before you downvote and take a moment to ensure you're downvoting someone because they are not contributing to the community dialogue or discussion. If you simply take a moment to stop, think and examine your reasons for downvoting, rather than doing so out of an emotional reaction, you will ensure that your downvotes are given for good reasons."
"Mod points award" is interesting. It basically incents the awardee to put quite a bit of thought behind their moderation decisions, but the flip side is that you get far fewer datapoints per comment. Perhaps there might be a way to use both systems concurrently.
It's still baffling to me that so many subreddits have rules against downvotes and use CSS hacks to hide the downvote buttons (that alternate clients or using the preference to disable custom CSS easily circumvents) and that Reddit just hasn't added that as core functionality for moderators to enable on a subreddit.
The only thing I can think of is that if they make it an option all subreddits will ban the downvote and for whatever reason admin must be really invested in ensuring people are able to downvote.
One of the clever things I noticed about HN is that you cannot downvote replies to your own comments. It's an interesting tweak.
On top of that the very recent rollout of changes to how blocking works are really wrecking havoc on debate subreddits where jerks are now using blocks to "win" debates.
Downvote is a disagree button as it is perceived as such and that is an issue. Same functionality is in NH - it just has a higher treshold when you can use it, but not really that different in essence.
Banning for arguing is normal - from the times, when early web forums existed. Banning can be for any reasons - disagreeing with mod, arguing with someone, who is friends with mod. Mod is a god in forum. The solution to that is - either be a friend of mod or do not argue with idiots for idiotic reasons unless you are an idiot or simply want to be banned. PHP might be stupid or might not be stupid - who really cares in the end, when you log off from forum.
GP was not banned for arguing, they were banned for placing a throwaway arguing/flamebait comment - "using php is stupid" - in the proper context, by providing some nuance. The fact that they were even banned for that, when at most they should have been warned had they been actually arguing, tells you everything there is to know about how well that 'subreddit' is being managed (hint: not very well).
I've reread what GP was posted and he was banned for reason: personal attack, because he did say, that comment is stupid. For exactly the same reason you can get banned, if you use nuanced sarcasm or actually if you are touching anything that is toxic.
Warnings can not be sustainable, when such high volume of warned is involved - you have to keep records of those warnings. Since it is easy to create account in reddit, outright ban is a warning - to not to do the same with new account.
If you are a dick in RL and do snarly comments in RL, you will be banned from communication quicker than in reddit - in some cases even beaten up. So, the only approach is to use reddit and NH comments with attitude, that it is not real conversation.
> get banned, if you use nuanced sarcasm or actually if you are touching anything that is toxic.
I agree that this is a thing, of course. But it makes for very low quality discussion, since non-toxic users will just let the toxicity fester instead of engaging to mitigate it.
> you have to keep records of those warnings.
'Reddit Enhancement Suite' has that as a feature, and it could be added as such on the official site. Or it could be done unofficially in the "modmail".
> Since it is easy to create account in reddit, outright ban is a warning
Returning with a new account after being permbanned from a 'sub' counts as ban evasion, and will trigger a global site-wide ban for both accounts. Reddit has gotten very aggressive about this as of late, quite possibly using AI bots that will try to detect when such "ban evasion" is happening, and trigger global bans.
>>I agree that this is a thing, of course. But it makes for very low quality discussion, since non-toxic users will just let the toxicity fester instead of engaging to mitigate it.
I do not make rules of reddit(I feel that the discussion somehow has took that direction, where... I am defending reddit?) - I just speak from my experience.
There is a reason, why humans can not have on their mind more than one enemy - their brains can not keep track of all the enemies as keeping track of all of them is a nightmare scenario, where brainpower is used just to keep track of all of them. As long as mods are humans, there are no good solutions to keep track of all warnings - maybe AI can do that, but keeping all that information in head is too much garbage - if I have to manage any such forums, banning is the best option for warning, as my brains are not unlimited. If a person convinces, that he has learned a lesson, then the ban can be lifted. Some bans can even expire, so it does not really matter.
When I think of warning, it also has additional information: how long it has to stay, until it is forgotten(because it is not a ban), what that warning was about, because you can't really make warning to kid not to touch hot surface and scald for the same reason, if he touches electric power cable - they are completelly different cases, so I am looking from that viewpoint, that there does not exist proper warning system and 'Reddit Enhancement Suite' is not it as well - from the description it still sounds, that it is meant for banning - not warnings, where warnings are meant to educate and protect people. Warning system means a lot of involvement and without AI, that is not viable, especially when no one is going to pay you for that kind of job.
>>Returning with a new account after being permbanned from a 'sub' counts as ban evasion
Not, if you return with different email, as reddit can ban email, but not a person, so this rule can not be implemented to a person and can be read as guideline. Unless you are a complete idiot and post your id data and after being banned from sub, come back and state that you have returned, then that rule can be applied in that case. And I perceive that rule exactly how it is technically done - that they might ban account and maybe email, that was attached to it - rest takes too much effort and is not really possible to do by reddit(at this stage).
> I do not make rules of reddit(I feel that the discussion somehow has took that direction, where... I am defending reddit?) - I just speak from my experience.
I don't think you're "defending reddit", FWIW. I just wanted to push back lightly on some things you said. And I've also seen a system based on escalating "warnings" work very well at multiple places, including arguably here at HN!
> Not, if you return with different email ...
That's not what multiple users have said in the current discussion. Their AI bot watchdogs are a lot more trigger-happy than that these days. (Which is quite fine and well per se, since plenty of bans of spammers, grossly offensive abusers etc. are quite legitimate.)
Well I disagree but I understand your golden rule so I'll downvote you since this is the behavior you are requesting.
Please note that I don't want you to reciprocate. To me downvotes mean I posted something irrelevant or forgot to be polite.
>>Downvote is a disagree button as it is "perceived as such"
Not because people are stupid and have one-dimensional thinking, but for the reasons, that textual information does not provide enough additional information, I always add additional information, if post is a joke.
I'm banned from askscience because the mod doesn't believe that I can both do my day job and make comments on my old day job.
Apparently nobody on earth has two related specializations, and since he's a college kid in one of the two topics, he knows that the comment I made is wrong.
Nevermind that it's about a device that I created, or that I gave him the manual and showed it to be true, or that my comments were friendly and positive.
Nope, just saying "it's a lot smaller than most people seem to expect, around the size of a minivan" and I'm gone, despite a dozen 3000+ comments and no negative ones
Reddit pulling its staff from free labor has left it in a position where nobody can be fired no matter how toxic they are to reddit's user base
How incredibly frustrating! I empathize. You're not the only one who has experienced this sort of Kafkaesque behavior from mods on Reddit, where no matter what you explain, no matter what supporting evidence you provide, no matter what reality is, you will be willfully misread in order to justify a case against you.
My account was permanently suspended for "threatening violence" when I said that the reddit admins are enabling pedophiles. Aimee Challenor used to be an employee of reddit, hired without any background check or scrutiny. I wonder how many others like that are still in employ.
I was hit with a warning for threatening violence when I said something, in response to all teen moms should have their baby taken away, I said “like Indians have had done for decades in Canada? I don’t think they should be taken away but rather supported and checked in on by case workers to help with the stress of raising a kid.” I was literally showing support not to take a teen moms kid away and offer them more social support but got a warning. Wft.
Reddit like to claim some lofty, detached sense of free speech as if the sexualization of minors was something that happened without their influence.
One thing they don't want to talk about these days is how they minted a one-of-a-kind profile trophy called "Pimp Daddy" to commend u/violentacrez for his sustained and voluminous work on maintaining the "jailbait" subreddit, plastering Reddit with bawdy pictures of high school girls he scraped from social media.
It wasn't until Anderson Cooper did a piece on the practice that the whitewashing began, with sudden claims of disinterest in the matter for the sake of free speech.
I'd honestly throw a party if Reddit completely collapsed under its own weight and its owners/investors lost everything they had... but I still haven't seen anything else that will replace the niche that it fills. As long as there's no alternative, they'll continue to make the rules.
I'm utterly amazed at how ban-wild some communities can be. I occasionally see stories of people being banned from communities they've never posted to (reading/lurking only) simply because they also subscribe to another community that is "opposite" of the first.
Take /r/novavax_vaccine_talk for example. There was recently a member [1] there who was banned from /r/coronavirus simply for being a member. These people aren't anti-vax by any means, but because it doesn't "fit the picture" they get ousted.
Ha, it happened to me on Sunday, I posted a message like "We got our booster 1 month ago and didn't have any side-effects" in lockdownskepticism (which is not even an extreme or anti something sub) and started getting messages from pics/netflix/showerthoughts and so on that now I am automatically banned from subs that I never even posted in for posting in a sub that promotes medical misinformation. I send a message showing the message that I posted and one of the mods from one of the subs just blocked me from contacting them again. Basically my 14 year old account is useless now, because a message in a sub (regardless of content) triggered an automatic ban on most of the subs I subscribed to.
I got banned from countless subreddits becuase I dared arguing with covide deniers on r/NoNewNormal. I didn't even agree with them and was always critical but that apperently doesn't matter
I got banned from around 15 popular subreddits (which I didn't read or participate anyway) for posting a comment in r/conspiracy which wasn't even related to the vax. There are thousands of cases like yours and mine and worst of all: it was fully automated. You literally posted anything into certain subreddits and you get autobanned in communities that aren't even related by any metric.
I didn't bother appealing since I don't care about those but it felt really dumb and perhaps a clear sign of Reddit's end times.
Did you get banned from anti-NoNewNormal subs for commenting in NoNewNormal? Or did the bannings come from subs like-minded to NoNewNormal because you disagreed with them?
I got banned from /r/CanadaCoronavirus for saying "we are currently experimenting to learn how many boosters are needed. My rabies shots required 5 injections at specific intervals.".
They banned me for saying that vaccines are experimental.
I contacted the head mod and explained that I did not say and do not think the vaccines are "experimental".
They ignored my message for a week then upheld the ban, saying "the vaccines are not experimental". I guess it was my time to be shown the door and nothing I said after that mattered.
They are also the mod of /r/AskReddit and /r/Covid19
"They appear to get some kind of sadistic pleasure in reading ban appeals and denying them, knowing full well that the bans are improper and the appeals are justified."
Or they get pleasure by making more money, in not paying enough people to manual review issues.
I've wondered for a while if reddit powermod /u/MaxwellHill isn't actually Ghislaine Maxwell (who apparently had some kind of association with former Reddit CEO Pao).
Reddit would be a great place to run interference AND a place for her to find troubled kids for "recruitment".
In fact, they make a point of not properly responding to reports of harassment (including the sexual proposition of minors), but they will permanently ban well-known and popular accounts that never broke a single rule. They'll even ban people directly out of spite, or because they disagree with you. There is nothing too petty for them.
They're even swindling advertisers in the most brazenly shameful way, and they've been banning live streamers to protect the lie[1].
Ultimately, Reddit's strategy is to simultaneously file their IPO and switch the design to be a TikTok clone with a web3 component attached to the awards system. They're going to tank rapidly, but it doesn't matter to them because they already got paid.
The bans were a way to prevent rocking the investor boat until the IPO, but they got caught up in it, and now it's going too far.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29574786