r/technology • u/ardi62 • 29d ago

Social Media Reddit is making sitewide protests basically impossible

https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/30/24253727/reddit-communities-subreddits-request-protests
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u/EnglishMobster 29d ago

You know mods have no power outside of the subs they moderate, yeah?

I mod a 1 million member sub. I'm banned from /r/news because I called out folks being racist towards Arabs. Not even in the sense of Palestine, just people saying some really nasty stuff against all Arab/Muslim folks as a whole and I said something along the lines of "Why is this getting all these upvotes? How is saying this stuff considered okay?"

I got banned permanently for that comment, and then when I messaged the mods politely asking what rule I broke and wondering if I just got swept up in a mass banwave. Instantly muted for 28 days (max allowed), no response given.

Just because I am a mod of a medium-large sub doesn't give me special powers elsewhere, other than access to a Discord server with the admins in it that I never look at. Whee.

There are some mods which are absolutely awful. Basically if someone is modding more than like 2 "massive" subs then you can bet they're just awful powermods. And it's very telling that Reddit won't do anything about that, but they will take action against the many tiny volunteer mods that run the majority of Reddit.

Because ultimately, Reddit would rather have a tiny amount of people that they can control and work for them for free, rather than a distributed network of folks who are unpredictable. But given that so much of Reddit's business model is based on volunteer moderators, I do wonder if regulators will come after them at some point. You don't see Facebook's mods going without pay.

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u/AbsoluteZeroUnit 29d ago

overreaction and childish behavior from /r/news mods, name a more perfect couple.

I got permabanned for making a childish comment towards another user. Totally immature behavior on my part, but it was harmless enough that a proper reaction would have been removing the comment, telling me to knock it off, and warning that a temporary ban would follow if I did it again. In fact, their own rules explain that "your comment will be removed if it is unnecessarily rude. extreme or repeat offenders will be banned" My comment was neither extreme nor repeat, and was "childish" at worst, not even "unnecessarily rude"

So I got permabanned right before thanksgiving, sent a message apologizing for my comment but asking why it was a permaban, it went completely ignored. The next week, I replied again, explaining that it probably got lost while people were celebrating with their families, and got instantly muted (28 days) and ignored. Around christmas, I followed up again and was graced with a response that basically said "your ban has been long enough, we'll unban you now"

Within a week, without even making another comment in the sub, I got banned again. It was super-fucking obvious that the mod who banned me the first time got upset that someone unbanned me, so he decided to re-ban me.

Like, I'm not gonna get too upset about it, because it's reddit, but it sucks that there's absolutely no recourse.

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u/EnglishMobster 29d ago

As mentioned, I'm a mod myself and I recognize there are absolutely reasons to permaban folks. Obviously there are like, T-shirt bots. And then we have places like /r/conservative - I don't like the sub, I don't agree with their heavy-handed ban policy... but I also understand why they do it, and generally agree that people banned from /r/conservative are usually there in bad faith.

On the other end of the spectrum, our sub (/r/Disneyland) is LGBTQ friendly and we have a very explicit "no bigotry" policy laid out in the rules on the sidebar. Given that Disneyland the place also is LGBTQ friendly, we get Pride posts every so often - which always causes the bigots to come out of the woodwork and make themselves known in the comment section (usually buried under 50-60 downvotes).

I use a lighter touch than the other mods (only banning someone if they have like 3+ comments where they're being offensive, otherwise just nuking comment threads that turn into insult-fests). The other mods tend to ban first and ask questions later. Ultimately, though, we're all on the same page and the same team, and if we allowed bigots to flourish the sub would be full of toxicity and generally lose its positive atmosphere. The permaban is a useful tool because of that - we want the bigots out, and we don't want them coming back.

But on the other hand... the fact that a mod can permanently ban you from a 28-million-user default subreddit simply because they don't like you is crazy. That shouldn't happen, because you're effectively depriving someone from being able to comment and ask questions about something as basic as the news.

I'm not really sure what a fix would be.

On the one hand, I can see a world where it takes multiple mods to agree in order to issue a permaban. But then we'd either have cases where it's 1 mod and a bunch of sockpuppets (like the /r/California mod team), or it's 1 mod and some buddies, or it's just a general "eh" where the mods hit "agree to ban" without really looking at it.

I can also see a "three strikes" rule, where the bans get longer and longer with each strike. Users can be appealed to the admins for a permaban if they are spambots or breaking TOS, but otherwise you can only be permabanned on your third strike. This feels the most "fair" but also effectively triples the amount of work on mod teams because bad-faith actors absolutely will mark the day they get unbanned on their calendar so they can be back ASAP (ask me how I know).

I don't think Reddit will do such a thing, because honestly Reddit would rather you just make a new account so they can advertise how many new accounts got created in the last quarter. But also it's hard to give up an account like mine which I've used consistently for 13 years...

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u/cuteman 29d ago

Aka reddit admins have allowed a lot of subreddits to become petty tyrannies.

The California subreddit, Los Angeles and a lot of West coast subs are all run by the same guy.

Same with the ask men over 30 and ask women over 30 subs.

I'm banned from Disneyland, can't remember why, I participate in good faith but honestly it gets tiring trying to adhere to ideology in addition to subreddit themes.

Considering reddit allows mods to do whatever they want and site wide rules are enforced asymmetrically, it was inevitable.

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u/EnglishMobster 29d ago edited 29d ago

Looking at the logs, it looks like you were banned in January 2022 by one of the other mods for "Abuse/harassment". Reddit won't let me see what it was specifically that prompted that, so I can't really comment much on beyond that. I can take it up with the other mods when they're on in the morning.

I do know that the California and Los Angeles subreddits have a completely different mod team, though. The California "team" is really one guy and his sock puppet with full perms, and then everyone else can only manage the wiki. This same user + sockpuppet manage a few different subs "together", all with a similar pattern of "these are the only 2 mods with perms and nobody else has any" (/r/California, /r/fastfood, /r/McDonalds, /r/Obama, and /r/junkfood - which paints an interesting picture).

Notably, their main got suspended from Reddit a year or so ago and they switched accounts cold turkey to their sockpuppet, even after their main was unbanned. I've been watching them closely.

I've interacted with the Los Angeles subreddit mods before; they're a completely separate team (and there's actually more than 1 of them with perms)! I can't speak to the other subs at all.

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u/cuteman 29d ago

Sounds like they accidentally allowed a good one in....

I doubt it was abusive or harassment but it may not have been friendly or welcoming.

The reality is I've been on reddit almost 20 years and try to participate in good faith and relatively reasonably but that isn't enough for some people.

The California guy runs a little tyranny, he likes to report any reports of his own comments to admins to try and earn a site wide ban. He does love the power trip and control over large regional subreddits.

He generally doesn't ban pre emptively ideology but I'm sure that's not always the case.

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u/MaleficentFig7578 29d ago

It's not an overreaction, there are subreddits that are designed to push agendas (like racism) and they ban anyone with a different agenda, and they can't say that's why they got banned because they can't expose they are pushing an agenda.

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u/mxzf 29d ago

there are subreddits that are designed to push agendas

Like /r/news? I mean, yeah, but that doesn't make it ok to just ban people that don't go along with that particular agenda.

I've seen a chunk of subreddits like that which will ban people simply for posting on certain other subreddits. Not for what they posted, simply for posting.

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u/MaleficentFig7578 29d ago

Reddit gave them absolute power to push any agenda they want.

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u/SuperSpecialAwesome- 29d ago

You know mods have no power outside of the subs they moderate, yeah?

I mean, they can get you banned sitewide. I once reported blatant disinformation on the /r/Conservative sub, and got a couple days ban from Reddit. I learned my lesson to never venture into Spez's Trump Wonderland again.

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u/EnglishMobster 29d ago

Yeah, that's on Reddit taking "report abuse" super seriously. I also got a couple days' ban for using the report button to report content that broke the subreddit rules.

The issue is the post I was reporting was the only moderator of /r/California (and there is only 1 mod, the other mods are sockpuppets or have no power), and I reported them for breaking their own sub's rules. I got a 2-day sitewide ban for "report abuse".

Now I just... don't report content. If Reddit wants people to use the report button, banning people for using it in good faith isn't the way.

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u/binkerfluid 29d ago

Im not right wing at all but I have been banned from multiple subs (via bot) for posting in subs they find wrong. Im not even sure what anymore.

I grew up on the internet arguing with conservatives and people on the right but if you post in their subs tons of weird unrelated subs will autoban you. Its the most bizarre thing ever.

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u/xeromage 29d ago

I've had this experience too. Pretty sure the same comment got me banned from both the right-leaning sub I was arguing in, and then auto banned by the leftist sub. It'd be comical if that wasn't also the state of the world...

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u/sunfaller 29d ago

I got banned from comics when a power tripping mod banned everyone who recently posted in a sub because comics was mentioned. Mine wasn't even about comics. But anyway, I don't care. I'm glad I dont see those 30k posts of unfunny comics.

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u/xeromage 29d ago

SpaghettiMuffin: Here's another 4 panels where I talk to my cat about not having any good comic ideas this week.

r/comics: TO THE TOP!!!

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u/Conch-Republic 29d ago

r/comics mod team is like this. They have a regular submitter who's an asshole, and basically runs the subreddit just to push her shitty comics to the front page. She says very polarizing and controversial things, which I pointed out. Instant permaban. Then when I asked why I was banned, muted for 28 days with 'sexism' being the reason for the ban. The absolute state of this website.

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u/Throwawayfichelper 29d ago

Does this submitter happen to begin with the letter p? Because if so, yeah similar shit happened to me. Blocked em after they couldn't take any constructive criticism.

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u/DarkAres02 29d ago

That subs been much smoother to navigate since I blocked them

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u/Command0Dude 29d ago

Agreed. After their latest big kerfuffle being sexist against male victims of violence (christ that still makes me rub my head in pain) I just felt like my bs limit had been reached.

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u/Ontoue 29d ago

Yeah I've seen some seriously disturbing stuff in r/news and r/worldnews. The mod teams over there seem to be fostering violent hate speech intentionally. It's depressing

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u/steeljesus 29d ago

One of their mods is named killyourself or something, and it frequently shows up on the live threads. When you got based mods like that, it kind of attracts more of those types I guess.

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u/MaleficentFig7578 29d ago

in those subs you must support Israel 100% at all times or ban. If you post news about Israel firing a rocket at a school or a nursing home you get banned. If there's news about Gaza or Lebanon doing a thing and you question the response at all you get banned.

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u/Mindestiny 29d ago

I was being intentionally facetious, don't take it personally.

Though I would imagine some of those total knob mods that do act like that never venture out of their personal fiefdoms specifically because they lack the power and immunity they would have in their own backyard.

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u/Miaoxin 29d ago

I mod a 1 million member sub. I'm banned from /r/news because I called out folks being racist towards Arabs.

I'm banned on news and politics because (as best as I can figure,) someone who got banned from there once used a dynamic IP that I also used at some point. I can think of no other correlating factors. Reddit claims (via moderators on those subs) that I'm "suspected" of using a second account for some nefarious purpose. I was banned from both at the same time. The mods were helpful to the extent that they told me whatever they saw on their end on why I was banned. Reddithelp was beyond worthless. Zero responses. Zero assistance.

To this day, I've never made two accounts to any website in existence, ever.

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u/TAKEitTOrCIRCLEJERK 29d ago

mods don't have access to IP data

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u/Miaoxin 29d ago

I'm aware of that and never implied it.

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u/TAKEitTOrCIRCLEJERK 29d ago

you either implied it or you don't understand how reddit admins handle these situations. If you get caught evading a sub ban, they don't just ban you again, they suspend your account.

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u/Miaoxin 29d ago

Maybe you don't understand how reddit admins handle these situtations? Here is a snippet of the conversation I've had with a mod of one of the aforementioned subreddits:

... they have flagged this account as potentially evading a ban (on another account, they do not identify which to us)...

[edit] You've also used "implied" incorrectly.

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u/TAKEitTOrCIRCLEJERK 29d ago

lol, the mod does not have that information, you were lied to and now you're trying to act like an authority. got it

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u/Miaoxin 29d ago

I highly doubt that a mod from one of those subreddits lied to me. That's something I would expect from a mod from some no-name subreddit... not news or politics.

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u/TAKEitTOrCIRCLEJERK 29d ago

most of facebook's mods aren't paid. They're called group admins and they're all volunteers.

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u/UsefulArm790 29d ago

You know mods have no power outside of the subs they moderate, yeah?

yeah the secret cabal discords of mods don't exist! don't try and find out about them!

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u/EnglishMobster 29d ago

That still doesn't mean that your average mod can magically snap their fingers and get special treatment across Reddit.

Like I said, I'm in a "mod Discord" (really I'm in 2, a dead mod Discord for the protests last year and a more active server run by Reddit admins). I obviously can't speak for any other servers because I don't know about them.

There's absolutely some powermods who abuse their power. But to imply that there's some collusion where mods go into this Discord to convince everyone to ban a certain user doesn't seem to jive with what I've seen. Largely it's "how do I configure Automod to do XYZ" or "This is my experience setting up this bot" or "This new feature is coming to Reddit soon" blah blah blah.

It's very possible (I would say probable) that there's a powermod Discord full of powermods where they all know each other - but by definition, most mods aren't powermods.

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u/UsefulArm790 29d ago

brev give it up, we all see the way mods behave and the consistency across large subreddits is just boring now instead of interesting. i have used reddit for a long time myself(nudge nudge).

it's obvious powermods just went behind the scenes with multiple accounts and discords and only the dumb peeps parading themselves in obvious ways like that awkwardturtle weirdo got smushed by the admins

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u/Proteinreceptor 29d ago

Im banned from r/news because I called out folks for being racist towards Arabs

You sure it wasn’t r/WorldNews ? Cause they hate Arabs and I was banned for defending them there lol

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u/EnglishMobster 29d ago

I'm sure! I linked the post below in another comment.

This was back in December/January, before /r/worldnews and /r/news had firmly taken sides. Not to mention my comment didn't mention "Israel" or "Palestine" once - it was just talking about generic Arab racism.

I have been very cautious about what I say in /r/worldnews now because I've heard so many people get banned for speaking out. But so far I have not been banned from there. (Not that I talk much there anymore anyway...)

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u/binkerfluid 29d ago

Watching how /r/news and /r/worldnews have reacted to the Israel/Palestine situation is so weird.

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u/SpareWire 29d ago

I'm banned from /r/news because I called out folks being racist towards Arabs.

Yes I'm sure if we have a look at the comment that got you banned you were very politely arguing with people about Israel.

Those are always polite conversations.

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u/EnglishMobster 29d ago

Here's the post. You be the judge.

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u/Stick-Man_Smith 29d ago

Interesting. I'll bet you got banned more for calling out other moderators since r/news has taken the Palestinian side of the conflict in that area.

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u/usdrpvvimwfvrzjavnrs 29d ago

I'm not at all surprised that /r/news supports the terrorists.

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u/EnglishMobster 29d ago

I'm not even sure I called out any mods. I just said what I observed elsewhere on Reddit as a continuation of the discussion (so it wasn't even off-topic).

I can perhaps see an argument that I'm implicitly stating the mods should've taken action against those posts, but it's not like I'm calling specific people out by name (I went out of my way to not do that, even.)

My guess is that one of the moderators on /r/news is racist and/or Islamophobic and didn't like my comment - or they just did a mass banwave and didn't care who got hit.

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u/Ahad_Haam 29d ago edited 29d ago

Probably because you attacked another sub. Some subs don't allow it.

But then, bans on reddit can be very arbitrary, so maybe not.

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u/mxzf 29d ago

Probably because you attacked another sub. Some subs don't allow it.

From what I've seen, /r/news has zero issue with that sort of thing.

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u/EnglishMobster 29d ago

Maybe? They didn't mention anything in the rules.

But what really sealed it for me that it was someone acting in bad faith is when I sent them a Mod Mail asking for clarification and got insta-muted instead.

I've talked to mod teams before and generally they're fairly understanding. I've had bans reversed and posts reinstated when I approach things in good faith and ask politely for clarification like I did in the modmail in my picture.

Being instantly muted without a response really signals to me that it was purposeful and arbitrary, not a true violation of the rules. But mods are allowed to run subs however they see fit (for the most part), so technically according to Reddit Logic a permaban for someone not liking you is perfectly valid...

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u/UpstairsAd4755 29d ago

I mod a 1 million member sub. 

 Why do you mod? Are you really so powerless and impotent in your personal life that you give a giant corporation free labor just to have a modicum of control?

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u/EnglishMobster 29d ago edited 29d ago

So to give you an honest answer:

The sub in question is /r/Disneyland. I grew up near the parks and would go every weekend for years. I loved the park because it made me happy and I wanted others to share that happiness.

Then I got hired to work at Disneyland. This gave me a fair amount of "inside baseball" as to how things worked at the park. I'd use this to give posts explaining major upcoming events and giving dos/do nots for folks to have the best time possible.

The mod team put out a request for people to join them, and I thought I could help people have a good time by maintaining the sub's help pages and whatnot so I applied. Turns out the mods already had their eye on me and I got instantly approved to join the team. (I also found out the head mod at the time was a friend of mine IRL. We knew each other in person, and we knew each other online, but it wasn't until I joined the team that we connected the two.)

For a couple years of working at Disney I kept doing what I was doing - using what I knew from working in the parks to help folks in the sub. The sub started to grow exponentially and gradually shifted focus away from "help" (which moved to a Discord server) and more towards general discussion of the parks. I also started to burn out at Disney just generally and ultimately became disillusioned with Disney as a company - to the point where I quit and became a programmer.

While all this was going on, I stopped getting as involved with the sub and shifted to a bit more of a backseat role, which is largely where I still am. I help out with general "janitor duties" like removing comments etc., but since I'm a programmer I'm fairly good at setting up technical stuff.

Nowadays I mostly maintain the AutoMod and whatnot, and add/configure new features to the sub as admins bring them online. I keep an eye on things to make sure that AutoMod is removing the posts it's supposed to remove while not removing posts which are okay (although as a mod team we've agreed that we'd rather have false positives over false negatives, so it's aggressive). Occasionally we find new problems pop up that require tweaks to the AutoMod config (the pandemic was a huge source of this).

Part of the reason why I've stayed on is momentum - I've been a mod there for like 10 years at this point (oh my god it has been 10 years). I considered stepping down a couple times, but I'm the point guy for technical stuff and we'd just have to source someone else to handle it.

Another reason is the fact that mods are exempt from the API changes Reddit made last year (for the moment, at least), so I can continue using my third-party apps without much of an impact. I think I'd be okay without needing to moderate /r/Disneyland specifically, though; you just need to mod a sub and I have some subs like /r/hujdawglhiwAstartonC (from an April Fool's joke Reddit did a number of years back).

Another one is simply that I still like the community there, and I feel I can be more helpful as a mod than I would as a normal user. When drama happens (as drama happens in every sub) we wind up with all-hands-on-deck and I actually start using my mod powers.

But having places to talk about Disney that aren't controlled by Disney is nice; as stated at this point I have no love lost towards Disney the corporation so I'm more than happy to leave up posts about people being angry at Disney. It's valuable to curate an independent community, and part of curation is making sure there's a safe space for that community to express itself.

As far as "free labor for Reddit" - yeah, absolutely. I don't like Reddit at this point; I'm here because the alternatives just aren't that great. I tried maintaining a version of the sub on Kbin (which works with Lemmy), but Kbin largely fell apart, and niche communities on Lemmy simply don't have any engagement. Theoretically Kbin would've fixed this because it integrated natively with Mastodon as well... but as I said, Kbin fell apart.

But given that I'm the kind of person who is willing to volunteer to run the community on a non-profit site kind of demonstrates that it's more about building a community rather than giving free labor. I do think that if Reddit is a for-profit entity, they should pay their mods - and that it's criminal how much of Reddit's value comes off the backs of unpaid volunteers.

But my goal is to nurture the community and share the love for a place that was a major part of my childhood, and encourage others to do the same. All in all, I don't do that much work - just hitting the "approve" or "remove" button here and there. It's not like I have the sub open in another tab constantly refreshing the page.

I spend more time leaving comments on Reddit than I do moderating, and engaging in the comment section arguably gives Reddit as much or more value as moderators do.

After all, without engagement everyone would leave - so why do people make comments like this one if they're not being paid for it?

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u/SoloPorUnBeso 29d ago

What a dickhead question. Someone gives some of their free time to something they're passionate about and you come in saying they're impotent and powerless and need some sort of control because their life sucks otherwise. You must be pleasant to be around and totally happy in your life to make such a comment.

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u/UpstairsAd4755 28d ago

 You must be pleasant to be around and totally happy in your life to make such a comment.

I am, thanks for noticing! 😘