Slashdot Mirror
Reddit Removes Communities To Address Harassment, Users Respond
New submitter sethstorm writes: As a change to their community management, Reddit administrators have banned multiple communities (known as subreddits) in a bid to remove harassment. In response, users have responded in different ways — some have pointed out the bias of Reddit admins for leaving known harassers alone such as those in the "SRS" subreddit, others have attempted to re-create the banned subreddit "FatPeopleHate", and many have gone to overwhelm Voat (a competitor).
There have been a lot of strange things going on for a while at reddit.
Banning people because they mentioned the alleged ponzi scheming of the CEO's husband,
Making a bunch of crappy sub-reddits defaults, removing other (crappy) sub-reddits as defaults.
This just seems to be the tipping point for a lot of people. I don't think most people really actually cared about the ban, but the way it was done and the obvious other sub-reddit targets that were just ignored, or had excuses made for them.
I just looked back at digg.com for the first time in a couple years from when it flamed out heroically on it's 2.0 launch. It's not horrible now, there doesn't appear to be too much drama on their front page. Looks like delicio.us Just a abc/cbs style repost of yesterdays "hot web news"
supposedly people flocked to voat.to so hard they took down the site.
The other thing people seem to be doing is re-enabling adblock on reddit, and voting with their purse strings by not purchasing gold anymore.
Reddit has an outrageously smug user community with a chaotic moderation system. I've been on Slashdot since the 90s, and I can at least say that it's a somewhat sane place to discuss tech-related and nerd-related topics (other than the typical political/religious commentary nonsense). The metamod system alone is a great balance, as is limiting the number of votes and randomizing who gets the votes prevents upvote and downvote brigading. It's pretty rare for factually-incorrect information to get upvoted or factually-correct information buried. Even when mods approve some article that looks like an advertisement, Slashdot users spot it and bring those comments to the top.
I occasionally read Reddit, but I get very frustrated watching completely factual information get downvoted or subreddits banned because it doesn't fit users' or moderators' view of the world. Between this and the Ellen Pao controversy, sites like voat might actually have a chance of doing to reddit what reddit did to digg. In fact, voat is doing the exact same thing to reddit that reddit did to digg when reddit posted the infamous shovel logo to welcome disgruntled digg users by welcoming the "fatpeoplehate" refugees. Oh how fickle the social media world has become...
I used to moderate a couple of forums about a few different video games, sizable at the time but nothing the size of Reddit, for sure. But there were some rigid things about our setup that I liked.
I feel like the backlash (maybe shitstorm is more appropriate) on Reddit is because the users don't feel the admins are playing by a set of rules. They haven't cited any specific rules the banned subreddits were violating, just "harassment" (which they didn't define.) Moreover, the punishment has not been doled out uniformly, with plenty of users pointing out subreddits that also should have been banned if harassment subs are banned.
The judgements being handed down seem, to apparently fucking everyone on Reddit, arbitrary. Like some far off god on Mt. Olympus has suddenly decided mess with people at random.
Maybe I'm just talking out of my ass because I've never had to manage a community the size of Reddit, but this just seems like an admin took offense to something ("got triggered," in the parlance,) and dusted off the ol' banhammer without thinking. I don't know if that's what happened, but that's how it seems, and that sort of abuse of power always triggers (the way the word is really used) a community schism.
There's a certain critical mass of dissatisfaction in a user base/community. Until that point the site can be salvaged. It takes more than an unpopular move by admins/community leaders. There has to be BOTH:
I think it can be generalized to other communities but for web sites in particular there has to be enough dissatisfaction to create a feedback loop of angry users being ignored leads to leadership blunders leads to more angry users. When meta-conversation overwhelms normal conversation there's a tipping point. Slashdot has almost been there. coughcoughbetacough But it takes more than that. At the tipping point administration must demonstrate such disregard for the users concerns that a revolt becomes meta-shared knowledge. Many users knowing isn't enough. They need to know that other users know. Only if that happens the site will descend into a digg-esque melt-down and hemorrhage users until admins capitulate or the site collapses.
I don't think Reddit has reached that point. In fact, I think this will serve as a safety valve. Users who strongly value freedom of expression will go to voat and everyone else will stay, and not see as many complaints. Obviously this makes the culture more brittle. Reddit is not in danger now but will lead to other problems down the road.
This is a big step toward Reddit becoming an echo chamber. New users will be less likely to stay and it will create its own cultural feedback loop. Those unwilling to toe the party line will find themselves shunned. Users will pretend to go along, hiding how they really feel, leading to a more intense echo chamber. Soon there will be prescribed viewpoints on almost any topic. Reddit will die then. Not with a bang but with a whimper.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
"people were more interested in personality cults than anything else"
which is exactly why I only post as AC.
I have had a few accounts here, and every time I would manage to offend some group of people somehow and *anything* I posted would immediately get set to "-1". Oddly enough, I have had many AC posts go to "5" over the years.
I don't understand it, so I don't play the game.
and yet here your comment stands, uncensored
i also think slashdot did have a top level story on this topic a few days ago
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Apparently I've missed something. What precisely got censored?
Just do it in the name of feminism and the admins will let everything slide.
I was never a user of fat people hate. But i watched it play out overnight.
The way they did it with instant ban. While giving the disingenuous hypocritical bullshit excuses they did.... Just dumb.
Don't the people running reddit know how the internet works? How people work?
Instead of having 'those hateful FPH users' in one contained easily ignored spot. Now they're spread all over and multiplying.
And have the support of most everyone who really hates censorship too.
And all the random users who think they should have been left alone, contained in their own sub.
They've since deleted HUNDREDS of subs that sprang up from the fatpeople users. An ongoing fight they can never 'win'.
It's just so bizarre.
You're allowed to hate and make fun of gays, trans, blacks, asians, jews, women, men. and every other group.
Talk about raping women, little kids, animals. And exchange tips on how to do it.
But oh lord you better not offend some fat people who had to intentionally opt in to your sub!
Seriously. Look at the subs that DIDN'T get banned.
http://www.reddit.com/r/SomeRandomReddit/wiki/sickandweirdsubreddits
Why do those still exist? They've proven they can and will ban a sub for 'reasons'.
I think reddit might be run by morons. Or at least clueless about how people/theinternet works.
I'd say it's days are numbered now. It's jumped the shark. It'll be a geocites in 5 years.
That's what happens when early adopters are allowed to cybersquat, or when participation and enthusiasm plus a large degree of echo-chamber dictate policy.
This is nothing new in the electronic medium. I've seen it happen in Newsgroups back when the World Wide Web was still competing with Gopher, I've seen it in domain-name acquisitions, in IRC channel and network management, in mailing lists, in forums, and most recently before Reddit blew up, in Wikipedia. Anywhere that self-important busybodies can reaffirm each other's beliefs and are free to ban others that they disagree with regardless of merit can have this happen.
Hell, I've even seen it happen on bulletin board systems and on Fidonet. There's a throwback for you...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Fark is small enough that a lot of the users know each other by name, it seems like. It's just snarky commentary on odd news stories; kind of meaningless, but some people have fun with it.
It was then they tried to appeal to the larger market and grab more market share. That's when it went to shit.
Boobies left the front page. They tried to ban harassing comments. Most things were tongue in cheek inside jokes. (I'm waiting for Natalie Portman to be banned from /.)
Fark, Slashdot and Reddit have left a lot of Internet refugees trying to appeal to the current 15-25 year old demographic or trying to milk a lot of profit out of something. If I had an internet time machine I would love to sit and chat in 2001 Fark or 1999 Slashdot about the current news.
I am not immune to leaving dbag comments when annoyed, sorry.
No, no you are not immune ;)
(okay, neither am I, but that's not why I posted, so let me get to that...)
Also, the moderation system which prohibits commenting and moderating in the same story guarantees reduction in quality.
I believe that's a rule which is put in place as a balance, to prevent someone with mod points unduly influencing an argument in which he or she is an active participant. Sure, 5 points doesn't go very far, but in the right places one could definitely put influence and pressure in a sub-thread against whomever you are crossing mental swords with.
Personally, I don't mind it at all, as it does something I find enjoyable as a challenge: do you mod, or do you jump in and clarify? It forces you to think carefully about whether or not what you want to say is worth undoing the influence you placed into the thread. If you haven't modded *or* posted anything yet, you again have that bit of decision-making to do before you apply a mod anywhere... you get one or the other, your pick.
It's a neat way to force you to pre-consider a course of action, which IMHO is something that most of the Internet has a severe lack of.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?