the weirdest thing to me is these guys always ignore that banning the freaks worked on Reddit–which is stereotypically the most cringe techno-libertarian platform of the lot–without ruining the right to say goofy shit on the platform. they banned a bunch of the reactionary subs and, spoiler, issues with those communities have been much lessened since that happened while still allowing for people to say patently wild, unpopular shit
Yep! Reddit is still pretty awful in many respects (and I only even bother with it for specific communities for which I haven’t found a suitable active equivalent on Lemmy - more frogs and bugs on Lemmy please), but it did get notably less unpleasant when the majority of the truly terrible subs were banned. So it does make a difference.
I feel like “don’t let perfect be the enemy of good” is apt when it comes to reactionaries and fascists. Completely eliminating hateful ideologies would be perfect, but limiting their reach is still good, and saying “removing their content doesn’t make the problem go away” makes it sound like any effort to limit the harm they do is rendered meaningless because the outcome is merely good rather than perfect.
Back in the day, I might say something out of tone in some subreddit, get the comment flagged, discuss it with a mod, and either agree to edit it or get it removed. No problem.
Then Reddit started banning reactionary subs, subs started using bots to ban people for even commenting on other blacklisted subs, subs started abusing automod to ban people left and right, even quoting someone to criticize them started counting as using the same “forbidden words”, conversations with mods to clear stuff up pretty much disappeared, application of modern ToS retroactively to 10 year old content became a thing… until I got permabanned from the whole site after trying to recur a ban, with zero human interaction. Some months later, while already banned sitewide, they also banned me from some more subs.
Recently Reddit revealed a “hidden karma” feature to let automod pre-moderate potentially disruptive users.
Issues with the communities may have lessened, but there is definitely no longer the ability to say goofy, wild, or unpopular stuff… or in some cases, even to criticize them. There also have been an unknown number of “collateral damage” bans, that Reddit doesn’t care about anymore.
imo if reddit couldn’t survive “purging literally its worst elements, which included some of the most vehement bigotry and abhorrent content outside of 4chan” it probably doesn’t deserve to survive
I see it as a cautionary tale about relying too much on automated mod tools to deal with an overwhelming userbase. People make mistakes, simple tools make more.
the weirdest thing to me is these guys always ignore that banning the freaks worked on Reddit–which is stereotypically the most cringe techno-libertarian platform of the lot–without ruining the right to say goofy shit on the platform. they banned a bunch of the reactionary subs and, spoiler, issues with those communities have been much lessened since that happened while still allowing for people to say patently wild, unpopular shit
Yep! Reddit is still pretty awful in many respects (and I only even bother with it for specific communities for which I haven’t found a suitable active equivalent on Lemmy - more frogs and bugs on Lemmy please), but it did get notably less unpleasant when the majority of the truly terrible subs were banned. So it does make a difference.
I feel like “don’t let perfect be the enemy of good” is apt when it comes to reactionaries and fascists. Completely eliminating hateful ideologies would be perfect, but limiting their reach is still good, and saying “removing their content doesn’t make the problem go away” makes it sound like any effort to limit the harm they do is rendered meaningless because the outcome is merely good rather than perfect.
They took way too long unfortunately , but totally agree. thedonald, femaledatingstrategy and fatpeoplehate should have been banned a lot quicker
It feels like they’ve let it degrade again too now. Last I was on it, lots of subs had gone really toxic and weird
I’d argue that it still broke Reddit.
Back in the day, I might say something out of tone in some subreddit, get the comment flagged, discuss it with a mod, and either agree to edit it or get it removed. No problem.
Then Reddit started banning reactionary subs, subs started using bots to ban people for even commenting on other blacklisted subs, subs started abusing automod to ban people left and right, even quoting someone to criticize them started counting as using the same “forbidden words”, conversations with mods to clear stuff up pretty much disappeared, application of modern ToS retroactively to 10 year old content became a thing… until I got permabanned from the whole site after trying to recur a ban, with zero human interaction. Some months later, while already banned sitewide, they also banned me from some more subs.
Recently Reddit revealed a “hidden karma” feature to let automod pre-moderate potentially disruptive users.
Issues with the communities may have lessened, but there is definitely no longer the ability to say goofy, wild, or unpopular stuff… or in some cases, even to criticize them. There also have been an unknown number of “collateral damage” bans, that Reddit doesn’t care about anymore.
imo if reddit couldn’t survive “purging literally its worst elements, which included some of the most vehement bigotry and abhorrent content outside of 4chan” it probably doesn’t deserve to survive
I see it as a cautionary tale about relying too much on automated mod tools to deal with an overwhelming userbase. People make mistakes, simple tools make more.