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0 pointsarmchairhacker5y ago0 comments

I completely agree with you, we need content moderation and some political beliefs are just toxic.

But Reddit just takes it to the absurd:

- Automods which remove posts which simply contain certain words (e.g. "coronavirus", apparently because too many covid deniers). I get trying to restrict covid misinformation, but I'm not even exaggerating, they remove anything discussing covid even if it's supporting.

- Mods removing some posts seemingly at random (seem using sites like reveddit.com). These posts really don't involve anything controversial at all and I can't understand why they were removed.

- Automods which ban you simply for posting in certain subreddits. And not radical ones, ones like r/PoliticalCompassMemes or r/watchredditdie. Btw, check out r/watchredditdie yourself to see more issues

Another issue is that Redditors in top subreddits tend to add politics to pretty much anything. Like, there is a highly upvoted post in r/nextfuckinglevel (a subreddit designed for e.g. people running ultra-marathons or doing crazy gymnastics or magic tricks) that is literally just a guy in his 40s ranting about how the U.S. government is fucked. And yeah, I agree the US government is pretty bad, but I don't need to hear about it in every single subreddit or r/AskReddit thread.

0 comments

atweiden5y ago

Social bookmarking site moderation is in need of an overhaul. Moderators have turned into gatekeepers who can’t be unseated.

I’m dreaming of an “old Reddit”/HN-esque discussion board where moderation policies are opt-in. E.g. submit a thread to /r/bayarea, users compete to moderate e.g. ban/censor content. Users “follow” moderators to opt-in to their moderation policies. Basically upvoting/downvoting but for moderation itself.

Even better if a user’s moderation policies could be forked and lightly edited. I even think there’s room for a learning curve here, given how thoroughly social bookmarking sites have trounced traditional media.

handoflixue5y ago

I think the big problem with this is that very few people actually want to be moderators, and the people who do want the position are often least suited for it.

Smaller communities can rely on simple upvote/downvote, possibly with some intelligent logic to notice who you tend to agree with - I think Slashdot was primarily this?

But past a certain scale, just dealing with spam is a huge deal. Plus you need 24/7 coverage, and you want mods to be reasonably responsive. Assuming each person can put in 42 hours/week of moderation that still means you need four moderators.

And of course you need a default for people who have just arrived at the site, so that they're not buried in spam or attacked by trolls on their first post.

atweiden5y ago

Not to belittle the problem of spam, but spam isn’t really what people are increasingly taking issue with. “Political” moderation or just plain obstinance are the biggest shortcomings of present day moderation policies. It leads to de facto namesquatting of popular topics the moderators of which have unfettered power to control the narrative surrounding it.

I bet fame and karma points could counteract the disincentives to moderate. What if opting in to a particular moderator translated into 1 karma point per week for that moderator? Moderators of popular topics (e.g. topics with 100k+ subscriber counts) would quickly become some of the most highly upvoted users on the site.

And if commenters could “layer” opt-in moderation policies one on top of the other, moderators could specialize then. Much of the specialization could be done by bots. Anti-“flagrant spam” policies would be easy to bot and easy to combine. The moderation policies left to be done by hand would largely amount to narrative control.

> And of course you need a default for people who have just arrived at the site, so that they're not buried in spam or attacked by trolls on their first post.

That choice could be left up to GUI frontend maintainers, assuming the site itself were open source.

Really I just think social bookmarking has the clearest signal for human communications in general, by far — by leaps and bounds in fact. It’s a public service for such a thing to exist in modern pop culture.

1 more reply

chakkepolja5y ago

Ironnically i find r/PoliticalCompassMemes to be most rational sub among those discussing politics. There are some edgy teenagers but you will know who is that.

NaturalPhallacy5y ago

I think the fact that you're forced to understand that politics isn't just two sides forces everyone to talk about it in ways that aren't so polarizing because you can't just presume the entire basket of stereotypical behaviors that people who believe in the false dichotomy delude themselves with so they can strawman and ad hominem all over the place in lieu of thinking.

It's a meme sub on the surface, but the discussion there is higher quality than any other political sub.

It's amazing what even a tiny dose of nuance can do for the discussion.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

atweiden5y ago

Social bookmarking site moderation is in need of an overhaul. Moderators have turned into gatekeepers who can’t be unseated.

handoflixue5y ago

I think the big problem with this is that very few people actually want to be moderators, and the people who do want the position are often least suited for it.

Smaller communities can rely on simple upvote/downvote, possibly with some intelligent logic to notice who you tend to agree with - I think Slashdot was primarily this?

And of course you need a default for people who have just arrived at the site, so that they're not buried in spam or attacked by trolls on their first post.

atweiden5y ago

> And of course you need a default for people who have just arrived at the site, so that they're not buried in spam or attacked by trolls on their first post.

That choice could be left up to GUI frontend maintainers, assuming the site itself were open source.

1 more reply

chakkepolja5y ago

Ironnically i find r/PoliticalCompassMemes to be most rational sub among those discussing politics. There are some edgy teenagers but you will know who is that.

NaturalPhallacy5y ago

It's a meme sub on the surface, but the discussion there is higher quality than any other political sub.

It's amazing what even a tiny dose of nuance can do for the discussion.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse