Reddit purges 1/2 of The Donald’s moderators – replaces them with approved mods

https://reclaimthenet.org/the-donald-moderators-purged/

by rhema • 6 years ago

187 238 6 years ago

shadowgovt3• 6 years ago

"""

Under these new rules, users can be warned or even suspended for simply “upvoting policy-breaking content within quarantined communities.”

"""

That's an interesting policy. I can see the benefit if one's goal, as owner of a forum, is to constrain the tone of the forum.

I wonder how the tone of Hacker News, for example, is changed by users upvoting comments in clear violation of forum policy.

hombre_fatal3• 6 years ago

I think it would be more effective and less heavy-handed/controversial to take the newgrounds.com approach and give you more voting power if you upvote stuff that doesn't receive @dang-action and less voting power if you upvote stuff that eventually gets blammed/rejected/banned.

I always thought it was a clever maneuver on newgrounds' part. Not to say this doesn't already happen on any forums, but my real point is that overtly punishing users with disciplinary action for what they upvote (as Reddit started doing) really seems like the worst of all solutions. Like something that was specifically engineered to maximize user outrage.

rtkwe3• 6 years ago

Maybe, that would require a more complex voting algorithm though which might be constrictive at Reddit's scale. I doubt it would be less controversial though, r/td is already convinced reddit is faking their subscriber count adding a shadowy vote weight to every users account probably wouldn't get a pass.

preferenca2• 6 years ago

I wonder how the tone of Hacker News, for example, is changed by users upvoting comments in clear violation of forum policy.

It seems to me that Hacker News' singular focus doesn't allow for either strong, purposeful ideology nor for people intently metagaming the community to signal boost ideology. Maybe HN has this problem in a lesser capacity for PR submarines/advertising, but it's not nearly as severe as what the people in "the donald" are doing.

jermaustin12• 6 years ago

As owner of a large HN dataset (~4M submissions, all the submissions since starting HNNotify.xyz), I've wanted to do some analysis on this.

Currently I only collect submissions, but it isn't hard to also look at the users and their age/karma as well.

runeb2• 6 years ago

How can you own data that is submitted to a site you don't own? Or do users submit to hacker news through your site?

mech1234• 6 years ago

The larger you grow the set of rules the more precisely you can apply selective enforcement.

Andhurati• 6 years ago

What does this do besides drive them to Whatsapp? Indian Nationalist movement grew to the level it is today in part because of the rapid growth of Nationalist whatsapp echo-chambers.

bflesch• 6 years ago

IIRC this is why WhatsApp has now limited the max # of users per chatroom, so this isn't possible in the future

preferenca2• 6 years ago

What does this do besides drive them to Whatsapp?

Whatsapp, etc is not nearly as powerful a recruitment tool as a service designed to create communities, like reddit. Not saying it's not a problem (it is obviously), but it's still limiting compared to reddit.

shadowgovt3• 6 years ago

I think you raise an interesting point, but in a narrower scope the nature of conversation on Whatsapp isn't Reddit's problem.

romwell• 6 years ago

Give other users a better platform?

Reddit is a public forum, and it wasn't a nice place with T_D on the front page. T_D has mounted a coordinated effort to take over the platform for their needs to the detriment of others.

Reddit admins aren't doing it to stop Trump or his supporters. They are fighting to keep their platform alive for the other 99% who perhaps want to read about knitting and Linux without being called cucks.

I believe this would allow the civilized T_D members to continue having a presence on Reddit. It's for their sake too.

resters3• 6 years ago

I wonder if any proponents of deplatforming can comment on the parent's point.

edit: why downvote this? I think the parent makes an important point. Is the goal of deplatforming to herd members into their own fortified echo chambers?

Agenttin• 6 years ago

In the end, the reddit admins aren't responsible for moderating whatsapp. Replacing TD moderators isn't a solution to end white nationalism, it's just about policing a forum which consistently flaunts site rules. If those people want to build their own site, with blackjack and hookers, they're more than welcome to. I mean, that's where Voat came from.

handedness4• 6 years ago

Whatever one's personal views, selective enforcement has been used as a stick with which to beat certain groups and should concern everyone, even if–perhaps especially if–you aren't a member of the group being beaten at the moment:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_enforcement

ceejayoz5• 6 years ago

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bjbp9d/do-social-media-ba...

“We’ve been running a research project over last year, and when someone relatively famous gets no platformed by Facebook or Twitter or YouTube, there's an initial flashpoint, where some of their audience will move with them” Joan Donovan, Data and Society’s platform accountability research lead, told me on the phone, “but generally the falloff is pretty significant and they don’t gain the same amplification power they had prior to the moment they were taken off these bigger platforms.”
There’s not a ton of research on this, but the work that has been done so far is promising. A study published by researchers at Georgia Tech last year found that banning the platform's most toxic subreddits resulted in less hate speech elsewhere on the site, and especially from the people who were active on those subreddits.
There are lots of examples of people who have been deplatformed and have seen their power wane. After he lost his Fox News show, Glenn Beck couldn’t sustain his influence—The Blaze reaches only a fraction of the people he used to. Milo Yiannopoulos, the former Breitbart personality, was permanently banned from Twitter for inciting targeted harassment campaigns against actress Leslie Jones, and he resigned from Breitbart over comments he made about pedophilia on a podcast. His general prominence in public discourse has waned ever since.

sdinsn2• 6 years ago

I'm American. I don't know anybody, not a single soul, that uses Whatsapp.

craftyguy4• 6 years ago

..and "hacker" "news" continues to march towards conflating anecdotes with general trends/statistics.

You are 1 American, not all Americans. Just because you don't know anyone doesn't mean there isn't anyone.

update2• 6 years ago

What does this do besides drive them to Whatsapp?

The mods of T_D have created a website, thedonald.win, in anticipation of T_D being shut down. Anyone who visits that sub regularly knows that that's "The new T_D"

asdfasgasdgasdg• 6 years ago

Which is a good outcome for everyone involved. Reddit wants to contain the blast radius of T/D. T/D wants to be able to post things that aren't considered acceptable on Reddit. People can and should vote with their feet.

iron0013• 6 years ago

Any other subreddit would have simply been banned long ago for unremitting and unrepentant rule breaking and evasion. And by the subreddit moderators themselves, no less, not just the users!

lukebitts2• 6 years ago

Exactly, Reddit admins are never this patient with rule-breaking communities. If you check the timeline you can see how many times they have tried to work with the mods and they were uncooperative

commandlinefan2• 6 years ago

Well, I don’t follow this that closely, but I do sort of follow, and it’s still not clear exactly what rules they were actually breaking: after all, Reddit doesn’t have that many. No illegal content, no real names, and no “group voting” (did I miss any)? Have the mods actually engaged in any of that? This seems to me to be very selective rule enforcement; every time I’ve looked through t_d, all I ever saw was silly pro-trump and anti-democrat pictures.

floatingatoll6• 6 years ago

You did not look closely or often enough, and there is sufficient evidence to disprove your “it seemed fine to me” anecdote.

DFHippie• 6 years ago

I can't say the behavior of its participants and moderators is all that shocking. If you venerate someone famous for breaking rules, shattering norms, and thumbing his nose at the delicate sensibilities of others, what are the odds you are going to be careful with "community guidelines" and such? And what are the odds you'll meekly accept your dethronement by "insiders", the reddit "deep state"? I don't expect this to unfold gracefully or be over any time soon.

xtracto• 6 years ago

Completely agree... you see users and mods swearing at the mods and telling them all sort of really offensive things...

maverick20072• 6 years ago

I personally think that this article buried the lede as far as controversial Reddit actions go. Users now can be (and have been) banned for upvoting posts in quarantined subreddits (both on the right - T_D - and the left - Chapo Trap House - among others). I've seen controversy erupt all around Reddit about this and it doesn't feel right to me. If the content that people are upvoting is bad enough to get banned over shouldn't it just be removed from the site and not left up to upvote?

Edit: the official policy is that only upvoting rule breaking posts will be cause for banning which makes sense. The Redditors I've heard from claim differently but are obviously biased. So take what I said with a grain of salt.

floatingatoll6• 6 years ago

Were they upvoting posts that violated the Reddit participation guidelines?

shadowgovt3• 6 years ago

"Don't encourage them" is a standard admonishment given to people in a group IRL when one member is acting out. And it's demonstrably impossible for moderators to find and remove 100% of content in violation of policy.

It pushes added responsibility on the upvoters to think before they upvote, but perhaps that is a fair request to make of forum participants.

(And taking off my "community moderator" hat and putting on my "sysadmin" hat---both dusty from lack of use---using sock-puppets or a like-minded collective to brigate-upvote content so that it is visible before it gets banhammered is a known attack vector against the infrastructure itself, and mitigating that attack vector via added penalty for the supporting accounts doesn't seem unreasonable).

Brakenshire• 6 years ago

Yes, if a user can be banned for repeatedly upvoting posts that encourage brigading or actual violence, I don’t see why users who repeatedly upvote the same content shouldn’t be included. Either there are rules which have meaningful sanctions or there aren’t.

markovbot• 6 years ago

It pushes added responsibility on the upvoters to think before they upvote, but perhaps that is a fair request to make of forum participants.

That's nice in theory, but there's no clear guidelines for what you're not allowed to upvote, and there's no transparency on anything, just user reports.

For example, this post[0] from someone who claims to have received a warning from the reddit admins for upvoting a post titled "Reminder that the police steam more money each year than burglars. Totaly normal country", linking to a screenshot of an article about law enforcement seizing $181,000 from someone. In the comments, OP posted a screenshot[1] of the message they claim was sent to them, which states "abusive content is not acceptable on Reddit, nor is engaging with it".

This content doesn't seem abusive to me, it seems like a totally standard reddit post. There is _far_ more abusive content on the front page regularly. How would I have known not to upvote that?

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/ChapoTrapHouse/comments/f9idzr/just...

[1]https://i.imgur.com/XCfErPv.png

ehsankia4• 6 years ago

Correct me if I'm wrong and I read it wrong, but I think you're mixing up things here.

Users that have more than 500 karma in quarantined subreddits outside of The Donald will not be allowed on the list of approved applicants [to be a moderator]

This is only for being a moderator. Simply upvoting posts (that don't break any rules) in quarantined subreddits does not get you punished.

If the content that people are upvoting is bad enough to get banned over shouldn't it just be removed from the site and not left up to upvote?

What ends up happening in this subreddit is that the bad content doesn't get reported/deleted, which is what leads to the subreddit being quarantined in the first place. The whole point of a quarantine is exactly to push people to report bad content, and acts as a warning. This new change makes sense as far as pushing people to report said content and not keep promoting it.

I also don't think the content is being "left to be upvoted", but rather when found, they will retroactively flag anyone who upvoted it instead of reporting it. But the problem is that the content often doesn't get flagged/deleted until it gets to the top of the subreddit. This is the problem they are trying to fix with this change.

windyaskew• 6 years ago

This article [1] says they announced it today.

I'm excited to see the fallout on this decision.

[1] https://reclaimthenet.org/reddit-banned-for-upvote-policy/

T-hawk2• 6 years ago

Simply upvoting posts (that don't break any rules) in quarantined subreddits does not get you punished.

The problem is that parenthetical, and determining it. Users were told that upvoting rule-breaking posts would risk a sitewide ban, without being told what content it was or what rules it broke.

Reddit says it gets to punish users by declaring any content "bad", by arbitrary or overly broad or even unspecified rules. That's the uproar.

This is not trying to improve behavior, this is trying to deplatform wrongthink.

defertoreptar4• 6 years ago

This is only for being a moderator. Simply upvoting posts (that don't break any rules) in quarantined subreddits does not get you punished.

That was a requirement given for being a new mod at /r/the_donald. There is also a separate, new rule change revealed in the recent "Transparency Report" that says that users who consistently upvote rule-breaking content will be banned.

The whole point of a quarantine is exactly to push people to report bad content, and acts as a warning. This new change makes sense as far as pushing people to report said content and not keep promoting it.

That may be the case. On the other hand, that may only be the pretense. Every four years we see the same thing happen on Reddit. We saw massive upvoting of anything related to Obama, which at that time it was just thought to be organic (and maybe it even was).

Then in 2016 we saw massive Bernie Sanders support to a swift and sudden change to Hillary Clinton support. That was followed by the "Correct the Record" movement and then later "Share Blue." These were all coordinated efforts to inorganically promote one political party and suppress another.

But that wasn't enough to keep r/the_donald posts from regularly popping up on r/all. That's when they quarantined it. Now they're taking it even further.

Before, political minority users may not post out of fear of being downvoted or targeted by those searching through their post history, but they felt safe upvoting content they agreed with. But now, there is this implication that they could face repercussions for simply upvoting the wrong thing.

Sure, we're told it's only for things like illegal content or racial slurs, and only in quarantined subs. However, we'd be stupid not to see the political bias on Reddit. There's ambiguity over what counts as the wrong thing to upvote. They don't tell you what content you upvoted that you're being punished for. The net result? The "wrong" type of political content will be naturally suppressed by users now being reluctant to upvote it.

pacala• 6 years ago

There is much more content than people. To the extent that a platform engages in policing thought, people will always be a much cheaper enforcement target than content.

baybal23• 6 years ago

FYI, Reddit's major investors include one big Internet company from Shenzhen

Advance publications is also having huge exposure to China through Condenast's business in China

ceejayoz5• 6 years ago

What?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_Publications

swebs2• 6 years ago

Which company is that? Wikipedia says they're independent with the majority shareholder being a New York company called Advance Publications

rdtsc• 6 years ago

Oh interesting. I thought it was a Conde Nast company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reddit says it's headquartered in San Francisco and owned by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_Publications which is headquartered in NYC. Where do the Chinese come into play?

jedberg• 6 years ago

This is fearmongering. Tencent owns a small part of Reddit, has no board seat, and has no influence. They can’t “pull their money” so they would have no leverage to make threats.

And by the way do you know who is the majority owner of Tencent? Naspers, a South African media company.

istorical• 6 years ago

You didn't even mention the worst aspect of the upvote policy which is that when they warn you not to upvote content that goes against their content policy they don't tell you what you upvoted that was found to infringe it. You have to try to guess what you did wrong I guess?

floatingatoll6• 6 years ago

Each post on the forum has an forced-visible explanation of what content should be flagged. Reddit was careful to remove plausible deniability as an excuse before taking more drastic steps.

creaghpatr2• 6 years ago

It's Pavlovian conditioning- you don't issue the corrective measure until the subject performs the undesirable behavior.

bonyt• 6 years ago

Users now can be (and have been) banned for upvoting posts in quarantined subreddits

I've heard this thrown around, but I thought it was for upvoting posts that are later removed for violating Reddit's rules - not just upvoting any posts on quarantined subreddits.

I can't figure out if this is the case, though, here is what Reddit said, I think:

Users who consistently upvote policy-breaking content within quarantined communities will receive automated warnings, followed by further consequences like a temporary or permanent suspension.

maverick20072• 6 years ago

And that's fair. I should've done a better job differentiating between the official word and the word of random Redditors that have a vested interest in making themselves look better. I have to assume the actual implementation will look for like the former than the latter.

Someone1234• 6 years ago

Misleading summation.

Reddit will ban users for upvoting RULE BREAKING posts on quarantined subreddits. In other words, they're going to ban the people posting rule breaking content and also people promoting it via upvotes (after warnings/repeat behaviour/etc).

To let others know about this without including the RULE BREAKING part is misleading.

bmaisonp• 6 years ago

Given they don't have to specify the rules broken nor the posts which broke the rule, that clarification is essentially irrelevant to the way in which this policy will likely be used.

DeedsMoraine• 6 years ago

If the content that people are upvoting is bad enough to get banned over shouldn't it just be removed from the site and not left up to upvote?

Honeypot.

rtkwe3• 6 years ago

The actual policy as stated is if a user consistently upvotes policy violating content that is later removed in a quarantined sub they will be warned and banned if they continue. They are removing violating content it's just adding the fact that you shouldn't be upvoting this content because upvotes = higher visibility and support, it's supposed to mean 'this is good content.'

benmmurphy2• 6 years ago

As far as I understand none of the people who are being warned for upvoting are given a copy of the post that triggered the warning. This makes it quite difficult for people to adjust their behaviour because they might be upvoting content the genuinely believe is not breaking the rules. If you weren’t assuming good faith on Reddit’s part then you might suspect they were doing this so they could distribute warnings to users who were supporting wrong opinions. The more innocent explanation is they either overlooked this or they don’t want to distribute the rule breaking content. I believe twitter often shows you a copy of the offending tweet when you get temporarily suspended.

charwalker7• 6 years ago

The sub mods don't remove the rule breaking content allowing it to be upvoted so the site admins step in to remove those accounts. Now they are working on that first part by adding mods that will remove rule breaking content.

Anything said by supporters of this and the other subs you mention are coming from an echo chamber of self victimization. The Youtube related first amendment case form earlier in the week is directly analogous to this but Reddit Admins are trying to handle this on site and not draw media attention to their actions or the sub.

s9w2• 6 years ago

Punishing users for voting the wrong things was actually invented on HN as far as I know

cwperkins2• 6 years ago

News sites like NYT and WSJ have introduced a featured comments section that is curated by the editorial team. In order to expose reddit users to different biases could the politics sub appoint a moderation team “fairly” and pick a few featured comments to expose reddit users to different leanings?

creaghpatr2• 6 years ago

I would venture that reddit subs in "The_Donald" are not there to be exposed to reddit users of different biases.

cwperkins2• 6 years ago

I would argue that that’s true for most reddit users. The US House has rules for decorum in the political arena where people take turns speaking. Should we try to recreate that for the politics subreddit?

floatingatoll6• 6 years ago

That would be an interesting approach for another forum dedicated to that experiment. You could start a sub of your own with mods assigned to that purpose if you wished to. I would advise against forcibly converting an existing forum without experimental results, though.

ordinaryradical4• 6 years ago

A theoretical example

1. I develop a community dedicated to fascism. 2. I appoint moderators who are themselves avid ideological defenders of fascism. 3. Given the motives for belonging to the subreddit, the users naturally chafe at and violate the sitewide rules for reddit. They have their own interpretations of how to best implement and promote fascism. 4. Because of the moderators' sympathies for the underlying motives and tendencies, abuse and rule-breaking continues.

Is anyone at fault here other than myself, the moderators, and the users?

PS: This article is poorly written and doesn't actually explain any of actual things going on in the_donald, it just insinuates a political agenda to this happening.

loxs2• 6 years ago

So, Trump memes are now fascism? Are we going to be surprised (again) when he wins again?

ordinaryradical4• 6 years ago

This is a bad take. I don't follow the_donald or its memes. I'm saying that if you build a community that is committed to breaking the rules of reddit it's going to get banned. You can insert knitting for fascism. It's the same across the board.

baalimago2• 6 years ago

The 'frontpage of the internet' is actively taking control of the subreddit of a presidential candidate, in an election year. I know that HN is highly against Trump, and probably cheer for this decision, but how is this not a democratic issue?

ordinaryradical4• 6 years ago

Reddit is a private enterprise and enforces its own rules for conduct across all communities and the_donald has routinely broken those roles as have the moderators. You don't have free speech on a private platform nor is there any democratic mandate to how Reddit must operate.

handedness4• 6 years ago

Regardless of where you fall on the ideological spectrum, selective enforcement is a significant problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_enforcement

botwriter• 6 years ago

an upvote to you sir. anyone who says anything even remotely in favour of trump usally loses all there HN points.

brosinante• 6 years ago

the_donald is not the subreddit of a presidential candidate.

baalimago2• 6 years ago

Oh, I were not aware. I don't have a reddit account and can't even get into the subreddit without one.

bovermyer• 6 years ago

I am continually amazed at how many people believe that "free speech" applies to anything other than the government.

No government agency is allowed to impede free speech (with a handful of exceptions). This rule does not apply to any other organization.

blackflame70004• 6 years ago

What about a company partially owned by the Chinese using censorship as a means to interfere in the US election?

yjftsjthsd-h• 6 years ago

Free speech isn't limited to the government. The government may be the only entity legally obligated to uphold it, but we can still be unhappy when others elect to suppress it.

dx87• 6 years ago

I'm continually amazed at how many people believe that "free speech" didn't exist before the 1st amendment was added to the constitution of the USA.

resters3• 6 years ago

HN is actually surprisingly pro-Trump. I have been shocked at the broad support for economic nationalism (trade protectionism, etc.) from HN participants, as well as the chorus of agreement with Trump's anti-China stance.

chrisco2554• 6 years ago

You're shocked that there are people who support liberty as a concept and they are anti-China as a result?

Ididntdothis• 6 years ago

Having one's opinions overlap with Trump's doesn't mean they are pro-Trump.

jessaustin2• 6 years ago

It's not a surprise. The war media has conditioned Americans to mistrust other nations and nationalities. Trump happens to agree with the dominant narrative with respect to China. So of course lots of news consumers agree with him, with respect to China.

Traster4• 6 years ago

Go and start you own website, create a sub-page for /r/president_warren and fill it with gay porn. It's not a democratic issue. It's also worth noting, /r/the_donald isn't and has never been controlled by actual people associated with the Trump campaign so to describe it as "the subreddit of a presidential candidate" is frankly just incorrect. It's a sub-reddit for supporters of a candidate, and those users happen to also be repeat offenders under the site-wide policies.

Fauntleroy• 6 years ago

You say this as if the members of r/the_donald are just regular ol' folks just talkin' about their candidate. This was/is one of the most rule-breaking subreddits on the entire website, which has only survived until this day due to preferential treatment. Subreddits have been completely banned for much, much less.

chrisco2554• 6 years ago

It is one of the largest subreddits and it deals with a highly charged topic (politics) so naturally it draws in all the trolls.

rtkwe3• 6 years ago

This is at the end of a long long line of trying to find some way to deal with one of the more unruly subreddits on the site that's been the source of loads of brigading, vote manipulation [0], and doxxing. If a community can't behave after 4 years of warnings and increasing controls at some point Reddit had to do something, this is short of just banning everyone and nuking the community which they're well within their rights to do.

[0] At one point td was basically the only thing on r/all because they found out that by upvoting everything and stickying posts to get upvoted they could spam the rest of the site.

caconym_• 6 years ago

Calling T_D "the subreddit of a presidential candidate" is like calling a forum for hardcore Harry Potter-themed BDSM erotica "the forum for Harry Potter".

Except ... that the latter is pretty harmless and all in good fun for the people who are into it, while T_D is a venue for (among other things) radicalizing literal children with blind ideological hatred and shameless untruths.

I still like the analogy, though.

Traster4• 6 years ago

I find it kind of funny that people are getting so excited. Reddit has long had a policy of banning users who breach the site rules. /r/The_donald has long had a policy of breaching site rules including brigading, harassment, threats and sharing personal information. The users of that forum have literally been linked to public shootings. Given how often the breaches occur it seems quite reasonable to actually step in.

You'll note that with literally any other sub-reddit, the response to this behaviour would have simply been to shut down the sub-reddit. How many second chances do you need? Personally I would've thought the first person shooting up a restaurant would've been the red line but apparently not.

s_y_n_t_a_x11• 6 years ago

That's not true. It's plastered all over not to brigade. NP links are required to prevent it. Ironically T_D deals with brigading from other subs all the time.

The mods at T_D have followed every rule to the tee. Other subs are not expected to control all of their users, but at least to enforce the site rules, T_D mods have done this. I haven't seen any evidence otherwise. Guilty until proven innocent if we want to use the fairest judgement standard.

JMTQp8lwXL• 6 years ago

NP links aren't 100% effective in stopping brigading. You can simply remove the "np." from the URL.

ArchReaper5• 6 years ago

I don't have links at the ready, but I have seen multiple instances of TD brigading with pinned topics. I am not saying I know for a fact it has happened recently, but it has happened. I don't blame you for wanting evidence, but their track record doesn't give them the benefit of the doubt.

benmmurphy2• 6 years ago

I suspect this is a case of an isolated demand for rigor. It’s quite difficult to have a political reddit with 700,000 subscribers and not have comments or post being made that break the rules. Especially when there are strong incentives for people to use alts to make false flag posts.

I strongly doubt r/the_donald is being fairly treated by reddit when most of the admin team has a fundamental objection to the sub’s message. The admin team in the past have shown they cannot act professionally. For example the CEO edited user’s messages in the r/the_donald to try and create discord between users.

streb-lo• 6 years ago

Which is exactly why they have also started temp-banning and banning people who consistently upvote posts that break the rules.

charwalker7• 6 years ago

You are ignoring the obvious for anyone observing the sub since its creation. I had meme post on Reddit long ago near its creation on if the sub was satire or not (it was started as satire in support of candidate Trump). Think AdviceAnimals Afroid to Ask Andy meme from Parks and Rec. Shortly after that the mod team turned over and it went down it's current path of clear rule breaking, racism, misogyny, and worse. You could read through the comment son most posts and find any sort of rule breaking behavior if not outright calls for violence. It's an echo chamber mods could not (or would not) stay on top of with a ton of reports to Reddit admins.

The current policy applied is to stifle the sub without a full ban to eliminate publication of its death. The policies for new mods are designed to either force in people who are disconnected from typical subscribers and can enforce the rules without bias or demonstrate how much of a cesspool it is and strengthen the argument to remove entirely.

sneak3• 6 years ago

The users of that forum have literally been linked to public shootings.

I dislike that subreddit as much as anyone, but that’s guilt by peaceful association and can be leveled at a lot of different websites, video games, and political parties.

Let’s not go there.

pjc503• 6 years ago

can be leveled at a lot of different websites, video games, and political parties.

Everyone - every signle website, author, pundit, politician, etc who finds themselves mentioned favourably in a mass shooter manifesto should at least ask themselves how they got there and what has gone wrong with their messaging. There may not be anything they can do, but a lot of places seem to think that hate never leads to action.

threatofrain• 6 years ago

Anything by association is part of reality and I'm not sure how people are supposed to negotiate with that. If you march with a KKK rally, are you associated with the KKK now?

Also, presumably not everything the KKK does is bad. Is it wrong that people in the KKK are all lumped together?

These are all questions of guilt by association, no?

eanzenberg2• 6 years ago

What about brigading, harassment and intent to incite violence of other subreddits related to Sanders, r/politics, r/news, r/worldnews? Are they under similar quarantines and rules?

ArchReaper5• 6 years ago

Do you have any examples of 'intent to incite violence' from those subreddits? The difference is that moderators of those subreddits try to remove that type of content.

Traster4• 6 years ago

They quite literally are subject to the same rules, they comply with those rules though. There's a very distinct difference between what /r/politics does - which is comply with the rules to the best of their abilities, vs what /r/the_donald does which is to turn a blind eye because they disagree with the rules.

s9w2• 6 years ago

That's a lie and almost the complete opposite of reality

ortusdux• 6 years ago

There is more info & conjecture on r/subredditdrama for those interested:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/f9g0t9/redd...

https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/f9xk6p/cont...

dylkil• 6 years ago

can they do the same for r/bitcoin

sergiotapia• 6 years ago

It looks like they've moved to https://thedonald.win/ - I wonder if they're using a fork of reddit's old source code. The site feels like a subreddit.

hombre_fatal3• 6 years ago

It's far more active than I would have imagined from this sort of splinter forum. Though it's also the height of T_D drama which lights the perfect fire under a splinter forum.

chrisco2554• 6 years ago

It's been active for months. They knew Reddit was moving in this direction over a year ago and then when they got quarantined last summer they sped up development and released it. T_D had close to 1 million members, so it's a big population of users.

s_y_n_t_a_x11• 6 years ago

It's been the official website of the T_D subreddit for awhile now.

This is not the first wave of drama T_D mods have dealt with. They've dealt with quarantines, post-editing, brigading, and ranking algorithm changes, that's why they have a site already and are using it as a primary platform as opposed to a backup (although the subreddit still has a much larger user base, the content is fresher on the main site).

Also, half of America approves of Trump's job, it's not crazy to think that there's a large amount of traffic, they have to go somewhere online.

golf3• 6 years ago

Smart move, quarantine is prelude to deletion, they're just waiting for a pretense.

skocznymroczny• 6 years ago

Deletion will come around election time. Can't have users exposed to non-leftist point of view.

update2• 6 years ago

I find it interesting that your comment is being downvoted. Particularly interesting since only certain users have the downvote ability unlocked.

Your comment is informative, especially since a lot of comments so far in this thread are "Where are the users going to go?"

morley• 6 years ago

It's ironic that this publication is ostensibly anti-censorship. One of the few things I know about this subreddit is how quick they were to delete posts and ban commenters that didn't fit in with their worldview.

charwalker7• 6 years ago

Similary the conservative subreddit has a rule stating it is not a debate platform and dissent or debate will be removed.

It's an echo chamber of self-victimization that probably sees the Youtube case earlier this week on first amendment application as both a win for private companies and a loss of what they consider their right to free speech.

derision3• 6 years ago

The same echo chambers exist on the left. I was banned almost immediately from the Bernie subreddit for asking why he's running on a platform of getting money out of politics while at the same time being the most aggressive campaign when it comes to requesting donations. The "I am once again asking for your financial support" meme perfectly captures this.

floatingatoll6• 6 years ago

Reddit’s letter to the forum mods:

https://i.imgur.com/lX83eZV.png

craftyguy4• 6 years ago

Sign in required
This page may contain erotic or adult imagery. You'll need to sign in if you still want to view it.

Fuck that.

floatingatoll6• 6 years ago

That’s usually due to supporters of the forum in question flagging it to prevent others from viewing it easily. If you have the mobile Imgur app it can view the link without being signed in.

Gravyness• 6 years ago

Can you post it somewhere where people can view it without having an account, like tinypic/postimage/etc? I get a "Sign in required" from your image link.

rhema• 6 years ago

I think the approach is bizarre. How will replacing 1/2 of T_D mods with new management solve anything? What is the goal? I would really like to understand what is going on in the room when these ideas are presented.

T_D is a cesspool. It's not the only cesspool on Reddit. It is a special cesspool with special attention and solutions that are tricky, especially in an election year. At some point, big tech companies are going to have to articulate their role (wanted or not) in tweaking society.

wtallis8• 6 years ago

Reddit is pretty clearly trying to find any viable alternative to outright banning T_D. They're attempting a proof by exhaustion that the community will not cooperate with any viable moderation policy. They're rightly afraid to just pull the trigger and delete the whole subreddit.

There's also some chance that they can get the community in its current form to die in a more organic and less sudden manner, by expunging enough of the worst users and behaviors that it is no longer such a self-sustaining cesspool. Banning mods who directly encourage "shitposting" by name seems like a reasonable step toward that goal.

superkuh2• 6 years ago

If you think shitposting is a "bad" thing that should invoke bans you're a little bit out of touch with the web jargon.

mrits• 6 years ago

What is really happening is reddit is just taking over all the most popular subreddits. They want to control the main vibe of the site. Understandable for a corporation but not in line with the original idea of the founders.

Gunax• 6 years ago

You're correct that it isn't surprising.

Best action is to bring this to light. Make everyone aware that Reddit is not a free speech zone--its a closely monitored and profit-driven business.

blackflame70004• 6 years ago

Yes we all know closely moderated speech has been Reddit's hallmark for success.

charwalker7• 6 years ago

This sub is popular among a small group but overall despised by the community. It openly flaunts the site rules and promotes content that draws a black eye from media attention. The current moves are though to be aimed at stifling the sub until it dies off vs a full ban as that would quickly draw headiness even though Youtube got the legal go ahead vs free speech rights just this week.

blackflame70004• 6 years ago

It's one of the largest subreddits there is but yea "small group"

macinjosh• 6 years ago

Advertising and free discussion do not mix, at all. It is not surprising this sort of thing is being done by a company whose true customers are their advertisers, not users. Internet companies who mess with user content to appease advertisers are going to learn soon enough that they can't serve both masters at least for anything anyone is very passionate about, like politics.

When I was a kid®, this sort content lived in web forums or newsgroups hosted by interested parties. You were unlikely to find any of it unless you went looking for it. It is probably best if it goes back to that.

Internet pro-tip: If you don't want to be beholden to reddit, YouTube, Twitter, etc. don't use them, it is really that simple.

viklove2• 6 years ago

The problem is there aren't many places where free discussion can be had without ad funding. It's one of the reasons I started plebia.io -- because ad funded discussion platforms will ultimately make decisions that are in the best interest of their customers (ad companies), not their users.

I go into more depth in a blog post here: https://www.plebia.io/blogs/site/uDIkCFPp2b8+Online-Discussi...

crystaldev• 6 years ago

Worth pointing out that Reddit up/downvotes have been heavily monitored for as long as Reddit fought voting rings. At least ten years. Any "suspicious" account has its voting rights neutered: The arrows become placebo buttons. I've observed this with every Reddit account I've owned (another certain website does this).

agumonkey• 6 years ago

where do these users go ?

ehvatum• 6 years ago

The writing has been on the wall for a very long time, so thedonald.win was started by r/the_donald moderators in anticipation of the inevitable. That's the recommended place for r/the_donald users to migrate.

Check out r/worldnews or r/politics for reddit's consensus view of "impartial moderation". The recent events are to be expected and certainly were.

XPKBandMaidCzun• 6 years ago

Don't know about the politics, but we beat up each other too much:

People end up in groups based on their journey to find someone who validates their hardship.

In 201x, the process goes something like this:

When we struggle, we reach out for help, and rather than finding articles that are soothing chicken soup, they're news articles that we are worthy of contempt based on characteristics we have. The reader may get angered, as preposterously, some how, a specified group of people's needs and niche circumstance eclipses everything else. The algorithms leads to a string of sensational articles about how society needs to be restructured honor the whims of people based on a trait and exceptional edgecase circumstances.

Respect is conditional based on tribal loyalty and repeating generalized tropes with religious zeal - if you dare to dissect it as a social construction - you're out of the club. You're not enlightened, don't get it, and generally what's wrong with society, somehow.

I think general miserliness and insensitivity create the conditions for people to resort to unifying over absurd polarizing generalizations above all else. If our feelings and worth are based on preconditions, I'd assume it'd be pretty hard to build consensus, cooperate and make everyone feel loved and cared for.

That said, when people squabble over rhetorical devices instead of unifying to improve the conditions of legal persons universally, it's great for the stock market.

swebs2• 6 years ago

So I tried to visit https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/ to see what the fuss is about, but apparently Reddit wants me to jump through hoops to give them my email to even be able to view it. Is there any archive site or whatever that will let me view this subreddit without giving reddit my personal information?

Bozzz2• 6 years ago

AFAIK, when you make a reddit account it asks you for your email, but you can just leave that field blank.

OrgNet• 6 years ago

They only make it look like your email address is required... black pattern by Reddit...

charwalker7• 6 years ago

The sub has been quarantined and I think requires you to be a verified user and go directly to the sub to view like its not listed on the site or even visible in third party apps.

https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/aayoxb/what_is_a_quar...

ratsmack2• 6 years ago

You can use this link:

https://np.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/

beloch• 6 years ago

Reddit has become highly successful as a political discussion forum for people from pretty much every part of the spectrum, but the moderation is utterly opaque. Even relatively centrist subreddits, such as /r/Canada, have mods who ignore the published moderation rules of their own subreddit and do what they please. If they don't like a thread or post it just disappears, even if it violated no rule. Reddit's moderation system is designed to prevent users from seeing how it works.

The result is a cocktail of factors ripe for exploitation:

1. Some political subreddits have hundreds of thousands of users and are highly influential.

2. Mods have unrestricted power and virtually no accountability. Users have no way to check that moderation is fair and unbiased.

3. Mods are unpaid and anonymous.

If Russia or China specifically set out to design a way to influence foreign politics, Reddit would be a fantastic platform to do just that. If you can get mods in your pocket you can promote or suppress issues to suit whatever agenda you desire.

If Reddit were going to try to reign in the very worst of its mods, /r/The_Donald would probably be a good place to start. Most reddit users view that forum as a cesspool that was quarantined for good reason. However, the methods Reddit is using here are as opaque as that of the moderators themselves. There has been no direct communication to users. All the reporting on this "purge" is sourced from the purged moderators themselves. While I have no sympathy for the mods of /r/The_Donald whatsoever, the way Reddit is operating here is indeed reminiscent of a totalitarian state's propaganda ministry. They permit much, but certain things bring the fist down hard, and it's done in a way that most people are not meant to see.

If you rely on Reddit for political information then you are making yourself vulnerable to unknown influences. While reddit is a fantastic resource in many ways, it's simply not safe to rely upon for certain things.

With most traditional news sources now being owned by a small number of international conglomerates, there is a real need for alternative forums of political discussion. Reddit, as it currently exists, should not be that forum. However, with changes something like Reddit could be made to work. Such a forum would need to make moderation much more transparent. You can't give mods the power to simply disappear that which they don't like. Users need to be able to examine the actions of moderators and question them. Taking away the toy of unchecked, anonymous power would naturally make it harder to find mods, so they might actually have to be paid. How you make money like Reddit does without volunteer moderators is a problem worth solving, as is finding a way to select moderators that can be trusted by the community they serve and not necessarily the company paying them.

Bozzz2• 6 years ago

Not only is Reddit's moderation system designed to prevent users from seeing content, the upvote system itself does the same. You'd expect a generic sub such as /r/politics to be somewhat neutral, meaning you'd find opinions from right wingers, left wingers, and centrists alike. Instead, you see nothing but anti-Trump and pro-Bernie posts because a larger part of the user base is left leaning. You could describe Reddit as a form of true democracy, in the sense that everyone gets one vote that determines the success of a post or comment. When dealing with a true democracy, you quickly run into tyranny of the majority, which is a big reason why right wing opinions are quickly suppressed on what's supposed to be a neutral sub.

This is why Reddit sucks as a political forum. Along with more open and honest moderation, you would likely have to do some serious changes to the upvote system, or do away with it all together.

viklove2• 6 years ago

This is a huge problem with popular discussion platforms. Users have no oversight over moderator action, and forums are run like fiefdoms. This can be a real problem when these forums grow to 100k+ users, and moderators abuse their power for person gain or just to stroke their own egos.

I'm going to shamelessly plug my own discussion platform https://plebia.io, where there is total oversight over all moderator action (a record of deleted posts and banned users), and users can actually change the rules of their forums and replace moderators through a voting system. If your mod is absent or abusive, you now have a mechanism to replace them with someone who is better.

Forums should work best for their users, not their moderators, and most importantly, not their advertisers (basing a discussion platform on ad revenue never ends well, which is why Plebia will never run ads of any kind).

vermooten• 6 years ago

Good news for once.

hcarvalhoalves• 6 years ago

Reddit is a private site, and everyone is free to host their own site with their opinions, right? What’s the problem?

Reddit purges 1/2 of The Donald’s moderators – replaces them with approved mods

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