> In some ways Reddit is worse than Facebook because it is influenced by anonymous entities with zero checks and balances.
The discourse in many subreddits is invisibly dictated by the moderators.
It's not obvious when you browse posts because everything is organically coming from random people. However, moderators can entirely shape the conversation by only allowing posts that say what they want.
In other words: The moderators are speaking through users, by selectively filtering out everyone else. Many subreddits are also famous for banning any commenters who say anything that doesn't support what the moderators want to see. The remaining unbanned users are effectively curated to echo what the moderators want you to see.
Discord obviously has the same dynamics, but Discord makes it more obvious when you're switching between "servers". Reddit mashes it all into one feed that feels like something organic.
In this case, I suspect the core issue is that the person used the Stable Diffusion trademark, which resulted in Stable Diffusion playing the legal card. The correct response would have been to force a rename of this Discord (if legally obligated), though.
I was banned from r/streetphotography with my first post because, despite it being a street photograph, the moderator on the clock at the time thought it was 'too derivative' - It was a permanent ban.
Since then, I have taken tens of thousands of street photos, and the fact that I cannot post them on the most-used street photography subreddit is confusing and shitty.
Similar problems exists with Wikipedia and StackOverflow moderators.
IMO people who become moderators just enjoy exercising their (often unchecked) power in these online communities.
I got banned from r/AskReddit for posting the Chicago Transit Authority's customer service phone number, because it was "personal information". (In a thread about the CTA, no less.
The rule is any comment that matches the regular expression /\d{3}-\d{4}/ is a permaban.)
I also got kicked out of a Discord server I moderated because someone asked to be nagged about doing their homework, and I nagged them, and then someone in the server created fanart of my anime profile picture hitting their anime profile picture on the head with a magic wand, and I pinned it. I thought it was hilarious and I treasure it to this day. But that apparently was the last straw. ("There must have been some underlying issue," I hear you cry. There was. There were some differences of opinion on how to moderate the channel and the discord server. The community skewed about 60% female, and I was pretty quick to time stuff out like "women should be in the kitchen, not watching a stream" when the inevitable edgelord showed up to troll. This was apparently a controversial opinion, and all the other mods that would back me up on those decisions had long since left. I was pretty late to the giving up party, but I'm glad I eventually left. Even if not on my own terms ;)
The TL;DR here is yeah, it's really easy to be a bad community manager, and people are pretty good at easy things. Stir in a spoonful of power tripping, and the results are predictable.
On the other hand, nobody forces the feed on you if you choose your own community. Yes popular subs can be very political and biased but it doesn't mean you have to join them.
On reddit, you can totally avoid bans and still say something. On Facebook, your words and your whole account have no value if the algorithm decides you spoke a 'no no word'.
Facebook feed is entirely controlled by the algorithm and that algorithm is controlled by the people at Facebook, the reddit feed can be controlled by you. That difference alone makes Reddit a little bit better than Facebook.
Getting banned on Facebook is extremely easy, I got banned for quoting someone's comment and replying with 'ok' and unfortunately I'm not kidding. So far on reddit, haven't gotten any bans or warnings and I have always kept my discussions civil.
Facebook wants conformity, it doesn't slap you on the wrist if you do something that Zuckerberg doesn't approve, it totally takes your voice away for a long time.
I deleted my 10 year old Facebook account because the censorship was getting really crazy. Somebody could give you death threats and your comments would be the one getting deleted by Facebook, that's how bad it got near the end of 2020.
> On the other hand, nobody forces the feed on you if you choose your own community.
That's only true if you stay small. If the subreddit gains traction, it will be taken from you if you don't moderate in a way that suits the whims of the power mod / admin cabal. They may take it from you under a flimsy pretext even if you're doing a good job, simply because they want to add your subreddit to their dominion.
Moderators on Reddit can be biased in different areas, they might let a comment pass or have a nervous breakdown over something they don't like. It's not clear and never will be but you still have the freedom.
Facebook algorithm does not miss. It does not overlook things or understand context. All it knows is someone said something they're not supposed to and that is the difference.
I'll take Reddit over Facebook anytime of the day because at least on Reddit, I can say controversial things (if any) on my own feed without the fear of the algorithm deleting it and banning me for a month where I have no voice, only a threat to be confirming to Facebook ideals that I have no idea what they are.
So yeah, both are censuring but Reddit allows more freedom.
It's a good analogy because they're both terrible. You can fly under the radar on reddit or facebook by staying small or using innuendo, but why subject yourself to either? Whatever relative merit one may have vs the other is irrelevant since neither is worth using. In both cases, you are only as free as a medieval peasant; "free" to say what you like as long as the lord or his informants don't hear you.
My utopia does not have Facebook or Reddit but whatever it has, is closer to Reddit than Facebook. So I'm ready to pick the better of the two options at the moment.
I do condemn censorship in all forms (unless specific laws are being followed) but after fighting against all the platforms for a voice, I see Reddit as the best option for civil discourse. Hackernews is also very close to reddit and we know the model works very well.
Wherever I am, I'm always looking for good discussions (like this thread for example) and I'm glad that I can do it more freely on Reddit and HN than I ever could on Twitter or Facebook, hence my comments.
I spent a large part of my formative years on Reddit and I agree with everything you just said. I don't know how to fix the issue, but I have some ideas.
One would be a "mod action audit." Each subreddit, or perhaps each moderator, would have a score indicating what % of comments are removed. Some random chunk of the removed content could be reviewed by auditors to determine what % were just spam and what came from legitimate users.
This way when I see a community where >50% of content is removed, I know that what I'm seeing is not organic.
100%. The reality of moderation on Reddit is absolutely horrifying, like flipping over a rock and finding a pile of decomposing rat carcasses underneath. It's unbelievable, for instance, how often comments going against the grain are "shadow removed".
I find "throttling" or "shadow banning" to be far more objectionable than simply banning / removing comments.
At least if my post is deleted I can tell. But when companies artificially limit the reach of content they do not like, you might never know.
Facebook openly admits to doing this. They are playing god by curating which information is worthy / unworthy of being seen, as well as presenting a warped view of reality to their users.
I'm not talking about deleted comments, I'm talking about shadow deleted comments. The only way (without external tools, I guess) to know it's happened to you is to notice a suspicious lack of engagement with something you posted, then visit the same thread in a private window and see that your comment isn't there. If you look on the account that posted it, you will still see it.
You may not even have been aware that the above is a thing; most people aren't. But in my experience it accounts for a large fraction, if not the majority, of moderation actions against real human users on Reddit.
Shadowbanning is very similar but IMO less insidious since it's a lot easier for human users to notice. I'm not sure if per-subreddit shadowbans are a thing, but I lean toward no because it has not happened to me (that I'm aware of).
Shadowbanning is at least not something that is available to normal moderators on reddit. You could set up AutoModerator to remove all posts by a user but they will be visibly removed.
Reddit as a whole does have shadowbans but at least as far as it is public knowledge that functionality is restricted to the admins. Perhaps moderators of large "default" subreddits get special tools though or perhaps they can call up the admins to do it for them.
Yup. The biggest tip off that our response to Covid is basically a scam is the fact that you are absolutely not allowed to think anything beyond what “the experts” say. And not just any “expert” either, only ones that fall inline and spread doom and gloom.
God damn I still cannot get over how many people continue to buy into this Covid nonsense.
>The discourse in many subreddits is invisibly dictated by the moderators.
If you haven't signed up for alerts on reveddit, odds are good you have no idea how many of your comments and posts have been silently removed: https://www.reveddit.com/y/<your_username>
100% agreed. The /r/cycling subreddit is unexpectedly one of the worst offenders, from what I've encountered. Many removed comments and posts. Anything remotely seen as critical of any aspect of cycling (even coming from avid cyclists!) is immediately removed.
Absolutely. And the front page is just full of this kind of specially curated content that aligns with the moderators' views. It's propaganda, basically. Question is whose?
The issue is more that if you make a post critical of some of the ideas in antiwork, expect it to get removed within about 10 minutes. While no individual in particular is pushing for those posts to reach the front page, only posts that fit the groupthink stay alive long enough to do so.
> The discourse in many subreddits is invisibly dictated by the moderators.
In the case of r/bitcoin, the largely invisible reddit censorship allowed for the effective capture of the coin's community and development. It was used to silence and remove those who believed BTC's primary use case should be cash. It was incredibly effective too.
The discourse in many subreddits is invisibly dictated by the moderators.
It's not obvious when you browse posts because everything is organically coming from random people. However, moderators can entirely shape the conversation by only allowing posts that say what they want.
In other words: The moderators are speaking through users, by selectively filtering out everyone else. Many subreddits are also famous for banning any commenters who say anything that doesn't support what the moderators want to see. The remaining unbanned users are effectively curated to echo what the moderators want you to see.
Discord obviously has the same dynamics, but Discord makes it more obvious when you're switching between "servers". Reddit mashes it all into one feed that feels like something organic.
In this case, I suspect the core issue is that the person used the Stable Diffusion trademark, which resulted in Stable Diffusion playing the legal card. The correct response would have been to force a rename of this Discord (if legally obligated), though.