Admins aren’t any better. I got suspended for suggesting how child molesters deserved to be punished. Today there’s a post at the top of Technology with a dozens of people saying the same exact type of shit about whoever came up with HP’s printer policies.
I messaged them to ask how my situation was different from that and just got the canned “your appeal is denied” message.
So the only conclusions that can be drawn from that is 1. Rules are not applied to everyone equally and 2. Reddit admins are more concerned with creating a safe space for child molesters than printer tycoons.
Without any additional context here by way of the messages you sent them, I can understand where the mod is coming from. So many new posts on a major sub like that one every few minutes, and there are only a handful of mods, who aren’t online 24/7. If the post isn’t reported enough to be in their sight when they review them, shit falls through the cracks. The bigger the sub, and the fewer moderators the more shit that slips by. They aren’t professionals. They aren’t paid for their time, and their time is entirely voluntary. Just because you may be on Reddit all day every day does not mean they are. This doesn’t even just apply to Reddit. It applies here as well as most public, community ran forums.
If mods weren’t the problem, how come there’s subreddits dedicated to bad moderation? How come, during the protest, were there a split of people for it and people being like “fuck the mods, they’ve had this coming”?
The moderators there are not everything when it comes to that place.
Reasons I've been banned include linking to a British Medical Journal article which suggested vitamin D might help prevent covid in people who are suffering a deficiency and very politely (because I know how mods get) suggesting moderators shouldn't be giving people medical advice. The mod in question had just compared vitamin D to cyanide.
I got banned from /r/geopolitics for linking a report about the effects of the 2019 American sanctions on Venezuela. I’ve been banned in /r/libertarian for linking and quoting the Libertarianism Wikipedia page. I got banned from /r/socialism for saying Henry Ford saw the value of a 40 hour work week.
If you stick around long enough, eventually you piss off some sensitive mod and they will ban you. Just the nature of online communities that have mods.
I think a better system would be an open and transparent tribunal. Where for example a user gets reported X amount of times and it goes to a new thread where there’s a discussion/vote by all the other sub’s users. Then it can be democratically decided whether or not user should be banned.
Then again, maybe that system would be worse because of mob mentality. At least it’d be transparent.
Mods being able to permanently ban people from subs or the site entirely with zero oversight has always been bad. Most people never really see the effects. I got banned from so many subs for innocuous shit. Just pointing out someone’s completely contradictory flawed logic is enough to get you banned from most subs if it’s the wrong person.
I got banned from /r/Gamingcirclejerk for “being a man” and for calling out a mod for their misandry. Or rather, despite asking a few times, the whole mod team, assuming it’s more than one person.
They say that Wal-Mart will hire generally everybody and that’s true, mostly.
With Reddit moderating, the bar is non-existent. Just prove to your overlord, Spez, that you’ll surrender all and any free time to devote yourself into being a bastard of a moderator.
I don’t think a single opinion-based community has ever worked as ‘intended’ on there. They all eventually get derailed badly and swamped by just complete idiocy.
UnpopularOpinions mind as well be GenericOpinions.
TrueUnpopularOpinion turned into an alt-right apologist cesspool. “US CONSERVATIVES ARE BEING CENSORED CUZ OF OUR PARTY!” No, it’s because most of you are hating bigots with a chip on your shoulder.
The10thDentist got overwhelmed with boring food-based opinions.
My post on there was something along the lines of “People who meme mental illnesses are just making a clownshow out of mental illnesses”. I felt it was unpopular because people commonly share lots of memes about mental illnesses and life struggles that I particularly don’t find amusing. Comics are a bit different because comics usually depict the struggles in a more artistic form so it’s more broad and can be more understood and relatable. Memes, I don’t think so.
But it got removed because it wasn’t “unpopular” enough.
I responded to the mods by picking 5 of the most top posts of their subreddit that depicted people trashing certain fandoms for being popular, your typical “X popular artist is overrated” and other low-hanging fruit. That’s what lead to the ban. They never like it when someone comes in with the real opinions, they’re too high on their little statistics. Quantity over quality.
I don't think that required a ban, but they are right in saying "we can't see everything" when they say that just showing posts that made it to the top that meet your criteria doesn't mean your post shouldn't have been deleted.
It'd be easy to ruin a subreddit's goals by just overwhelming the mods with rule-breaking content until it's impossible to remove all of it, because then you'd be bound to have at least one example where rules were broken but post is popular.
I mean, I'd argue depending on your audience, "People who meme mental illnesses are just making a clownshow out of mental illnesses" is probably a very popular opinion. like you'd have to go to 4ch probably to get really angry crowds.
If the mods admit that they would have removed the posts had they seen them (implied by the "we can't see everything" response) - yet they're not open to being alerted to problem posts (implied by the "checkmate" sass) - how can they fairly expect users not to be frustrated by the unequal application of the rules?
The correct mod response here would have been "we understand you disagree, but we don't feel the posts you linked violate the rules" or "you're right, we missed those too," not "we didn't see those but also we're banning you for telling us about them."
They breed the hostile environment they complain so much about, and the cycle continues.
That's what I mean by not being open to being alerted to problem posts. For many subs, there are too many reports to sort through, and the mods welcome modmail to point out something that has slipped under the radar. This sub doesn't allow that, so they won't be able to work with their subs' members for a fairer application of the rules.
In a way, they can’t see everything but I imagine thousands of posts are coming in every hour. Of course they can’t see everything, which is why they’ve implemented automoderation and bot assistance.
However, I don’t doubt that they haven’t at least have had a few glances at the front page of their subreddit to maybe think that their concept of ‘unpopular’ isn’t what’s practiced.
Well, I was known for being fast on the ban. I don’t fucking play. But I wouldn’t have banned you for that.
I would have told you to stfu and take the removal because it doesn’t matter what someone else does, it matters what you do. Each post gets handled at the time it comes, and that’s how it goes. Trying to swing dick like you did isn’t cool
But yeah, way over the line to ban for that. At most a 24 hour ban to give you time to cool off after being told to stfu lol
A rule that permits a moderator to remove something because its “not unpopular enough” is not a rule. Its a suggestion. And while this is certainly one way of approaching moderation, this style does tend to create a lot of discontent in users.
At the end of the day, Reddit moderators are unpaid volunteers. When the standards for Reddit moderation are : have no job, no life, be willing to wade through literal online garbage 24/7, and do it unpaid, you’re going to get exactly what Reddit has. Terrible moderators that go on power trips constantly because of tantrums, and a very very tiny fraction of people who do not value themselves enough.
Dunno about you, but I'm here so I can run a community as unprofessionally as possible. If I can't tell a troll to fuck off with a good banning, then what's the point of modding?
Depends on people’s attitude towards it as a whole I think. Saying that and yet expecting professional moderation would be hypocritical. Saying that while acknowledging that one isn’t likely to get professional tier moderation as a tradeoff for the type of platform one has embraced, while criticizing a platform that does expect or at least want that for free is not.
As if Reddit's AEO is any better. I got once perma banned for saying that a fascist Italy should be kicked out of the EU & NATO, because apparently that "spreads hate". Tried to appeal, saying that both institutions require democratic foundations, which was of course denied.
I also can't count the amount of reported hate speech, calls for violence etc. came back with that they "don't violate their TOS" and thus no action has been taken. Complete monkey club there. Probably some outsourced Indian callcenter where they can barely speak English and don't understand 90% of the reports context.
Honestly kinda glad I won't have to deal with this crap anymore. I did hundreds of reports each week and it did fuck all. Let the platform burn down with all its extremistic bullshit and mod & admin abuse.
Absolutely agree with you there, on both Italy and Reddit. I pretty much stopped posting anything remotely interesting due to the arbitrary mod and soft alt-right admin temper tantrums. In comparison, here in the Fediverse, my creativity has been unchained, and I've already contributed more here than my previous decade + on Reddit.
spez is a nazi, that's why. I got a 7 day ban recently for criticizing trump, and now I'm here. reddit's jumped the shark, actually it did a few years ago and only now is there something good enough to replace it
For criticizing Trump? Well, that’d be a hell of a kicker for all of the conservative crybabies on there that whine about being censored and how Reddit is left-wing dominated.
those people have been crying crocodile tears for years, I don't listen to them anymore. but yes you'll get banned for talking about trump cultists because it's inflammatory language, never mind the man has an actual cult of personality around him
That it is a hole imperfectly stuffed with shit is a natural consequence of basic administrative policy. Why you choose to go there is unknown to philosophers and physicists, like whatever came before time started at the big bang.
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