(Replying to PARENT post)
We (buu700 and I) added Gallowboob some years back largely to have insight into how other teams modded their subs at a time when we were growing quickly and needed to know what to do to keep up. While useful in meeting that goal, we quickly realized it was pretty meaningless for /r/relationship_advice because of the nature of the questions we were getting. The only sub like ours is /r/relationships, and we each differentiated from each other by having different rules and content creation controls.
As best as we know, Gallowboob enjoys the place and is pretty decent at modding, so we're pretty happy to have him. Most mods burn out quickly because of how dark the questions get as well as because of how meaninglessly violent people become when their posts are modded.
---
Separate comment on an item in the story:
> Allam believes his time on the site has made him a more โparanoidโ person and led him to develop โborderline PTSD.โ
Moderating Reddit's larger subreddits is absolutely capable of resulting in PTSD-like symptoms. I've been dealing with some on and off after a post some years ago where somebody who requested advice followed through with the best course of action only to find that his wife killed their kids soon after. And Reddit has absolutely no support system for things like this.
(Replying to PARENT post)
> The Upvoted story never materialized; Reddit administrators were still digging out from under a deluge of drama including revelations about online harassment from its former CEO Yishan Wong and the sudden departure of current CEO Ellen Pao. With no job, Allam spent the next six months crafting the following cover letter and applying to jobs. In February, Ohanianโs advice paid off. Allam, better known on Reddit as gallowboob, had landed a full-time executive gig with the United Kingdom-based media company UNILAD. He got the job thanks to his Reddit prowess. > > ...Allam is a social media executive at UNILAD, an online media organization that โamassed a Facebook following of over 12 million fans, 30 million monthly unique visitors to the website and over 1 billion video views a month,โ states the company on its site.
(Replying to PARENT post)
(Replying to PARENT post)
Case in point: the moderation system. Now, if you're passionate about some niche topic, and create a sub for it and become the moderator, then fine; you rock. Things work well for you and your subscribers.
But if you're a sub of a large interest area (say, the country of India). How do you moderate there? How do you accept the diversity of thoughts and opinions, many of which run contrary to your own, but are perfectly valid in a diverse society?
Currently, /r/india has a bunch of moderators with a severe political stance (I won't go into specifics here, but I've been banned from it several times). They will warn you and ultimately ban you if you don't toe their "moderation" line. So on the one hand you have the "in" group of people threatening violence and harassing people; and on the other, you have the complement set of people getting banned for using words like "naive" (happened to me). There current moderation system (whoever started the reddit, and whoever they blessed, get to be moderators; sortof like a monarchy and a feudal system) is horribly out of date in today's world.
Here's how I would fix it: every year, have an election of moderators. People get votes proportional to their karma (or upvotes or some function thereof, which could heavily penalize bad posting behavior) earned since the last election. And the top N vote getters get to be moderators for a year.
(Replying to PARENT post)
(Replying to PARENT post)
He is not only known for being a reddit power user, he's also infamous for abusing his mod powers, and being provocative and elitist towards people calling him out, mocking, trolling or banning them. He took over and wiped out a sub that tracked his abuse of mod powers. On the big subs he's controlling people got banned frequently for calling him out, long before this more recent drama. These whole theatrics have been going on for years. I've been targeted by him in the past, sadly I can't dig it up because reddit's comment history only goes back so far.
(Replying to PARENT post)
Why does it matter if a few volunteer mods manage a ton of subs?
Isn't it hard to do? So they have a hard job? And it's volunteer?
And .. what? I don't understand the outrage directed at mods I guess.
Note: I'm a light Reddit user. I follow a handful of subs. And I can't name a single mod of any of them. Maybe this is more meaningful for people who spend more time on the site and are more involved in their particular subs? What, they just bash heads with mods sometimes?
(Replying to PARENT post)
As frustrated as Iโve found myself on Reddit, to the point Iโve all but quit using it save for some video game stuff, I still canโt imagine how mods can be bothered to put up with bad actors, trolls, whiners, and fools. Everyone checks out at some point โ- and as a normal user, I can and I feel no compunction about letting the conversation devolve, but when you rely on volunteers to do the policing, itโs going to happen more often and with harsh consequences. And you can see on many subs that absent strong moderation, discussion on anything remotely contentious devolves into an ugly free for all. Even if the thread is locked or certain comments get deleted, itโs too little too late, and the damage has been done to civil discourse.
This article has me thinking more broadly about the internet and the future of online communities. Large platforms canโt thoroughly patrol every nook and cranny without unreasonable amounts of employees. And yet itโs never been more important to have fair and timely moderation on serious issues. Machine learning might have a role to play here, but itโll require some sort of human oversight to provide a โstarterโ or some context within which a system can determine what can be censored. What else is left? Unmasking everyone isnโt going to happen for good reason. The internet is in dire need of a police force, and volunteerism isnโt sufficient.
(Replying to PARENT post)
I do not understand why mods work for free on the huge subreddits. Abuse, spam and more would make the position horrible.
Reddit needs to start paying folks to do this job.
(Replying to PARENT post)
On Reddit (I am not a mod but friends are) mods burn out quickly. Many people have never seen the horrible behavior that goes on in the background.
Same thing on Facebook. I moderate a small 800 person group, one which is private and has mostly pre-screened people. We burned through so many mods over the years and the worst things we encounter are insult wars as nobody is going to post porn or graphic violence with their real life account.
In open source, the heavy lifting on a lot of projects is done by just 1-2 people. Sure the project might have 30 contributors, but it is those 1 or 2 who dedicate their evening when a major bug is found to fixing it.
In all these cases, the work is mostly done by whoever is willing to do it. Over time, people who find the work stressful quit and those who don't end up taking on an enormous amount.
(Replying to PARENT post)
I felt that it wasn't a forum that was conductive to interesting discussion.
But also, I know it's a cliche to talk about the eternal September effect, but somehow it feels like the discourse in the site is even more stupid today.
At least to me it seems like it's just useful as a problem and answer site you Google on.
But now it seems like to some of users they feel like the website is the definer and trendsetter of western culture.
Instead of a website where people post memes and shit post.
Like what am I reading? That there's a shadowy cabal of moderators?
Who cares if they're running the big subreddits?
Even who cares if they're being paid by companies to post things.
Reddit is website that does little moderation themselves (except when it gets them in the news) and rely on volunteers to actually manage the site.
What do expect? That people are going to spend 10s or hours a week for the joy of community? So they can make Reddit's employees and shareholders money?
When it comes to Facebook people say "if you're not paying for it, you're the product"
But it's the same for Reddit. But this time it's the users which are taking advantage?
Oh no.
But perhaps I don't understand the seriousness of Reddit.
(Replying to PARENT post)
I deleted my reddit account in a panic after someone sent me a DM saying they knew where I lived and I saw a guy wondering around my apartment complex with his phone out like he was recording. I never want to be highly visible on reddit again.
(Replying to PARENT post)
You can see it here: https://old.reddit.com/r/AgainstKarmaWhores/comments/eb146l/...
I doubt that he would walk away from the website even though a number of users would be happier.
There are hundreds of fantastic moderators on Reddit that genuinely help people and there are also a few people who want to feel powerful by manipulating others.
(Replying to PARENT post)
(Replying to PARENT post)
I moderated a sub with 100,000 subscribers for a couple of years.
Most of the work was removing obviously bad content. There was a user who would make a new account every few weeks, post various comments to make it legit, and then start posting legitimate comments with links to hardcore pornography disguised as normal links. Users once rebelled because I removed 100% illegal content.
Users and mods on the subreddit started to get hit with SLAPP lawsuits at one point. I was always very careful to hide my real identity but that was the final straw. I stepped down from modding shortly after.
Modding is a near impossible task and as a subreddit gets bigger it gets exponentially harder.
(Replying to PARENT post)
(Replying to PARENT post)
A subreddit is like a community where every citizen has a gun. They can police themselves by downvoting each other... the only thing mods need to do is make sure the theme of the community stays on track.
I'm the sole mod of a subreddit with over 600k subscribers and I basically do nothing. My case is admittedly special because the subreddit is a weird kind of "game" with very specific, well-defined rules about how to reply to posts (and a bot that deletes replies that violate this rule), but in general I feel like people don't have enough faith in the ability of a community to handle itself. Occasionally I've had to ban people who are spamming /new with disturbing content, and I did end up setting some useful automoderator rules, but otherwise I find that the community runs itself.
I've gotten a few messages from people over the years saying they're unsubscribing because they wanted me to take a more involved role in moderating the content posted to the subreddit, removing posts they thought were "low quality". That's fair, but I don't think it should be up to me what counts as "low quality"... I'm just one person. The beauty of a community is watching it develop organically from the actions of thousands of people, not molding it into some shape you happen to prefer. It's like an organism, and it has a mechanism to achieve homeostasis: upvotes and downvotes.
(Replying to PARENT post)
(Replying to PARENT post)
(Replying to PARENT post)
Last week a reddit thread discussing this list was linked on HN, someone linked to a site where you could see deleted comments. There were a lot. But it was mainly people asking very reasonable questions and wondering out loud whether these "power mods" got paid, perhaps by advertisers or influencer agencies, because doing this kind of moderation is clearly way more than a full time job. Other deleted comments were wondering if those accounts were perhaps shared (again super sensible question given the amount of time it would cost). At the very worst some of the deletions devolved into wild speculations (as reddit is wont to).
Point is, obviously they do get protection from the site. And apparently sometimes unreasonably so.
Some stinky stuff is going on below the surface, is my feeling. Doesn't mean that person gets to be harassed, of course.
Also, I don't really buy the mental health comparison to FB moderators. The latter is an absolute shit job, and it's done by anonymous teams of paid people. That doesn't really rhyme with being the most upvoted Reddit celebrity of all time, with their seemingly superhuman sense to post the juiciest meme at the most opportune time.
(Replying to PARENT post)
(Replying to PARENT post)
If that's true, why? How could an individual possibly have enough time and attention to moderate more than one subreddit with millions of users?
(Replying to PARENT post)
This is a positive change -- that one user account had too much power over too many subs. I refuse to believe money wasn't becoming involved.
Size breeds skepticism and the GallowBoob account (whomever was using it) just got too big.
(Replying to PARENT post)
I encourage you to dig into the threads of the alleged post that made him 'flip' https://www.reddit.com/r/therewasanattempt/comments/gk0w4c/t...
some are straight up harassment, which is sad. some describe however all the many things he did to ruin other people enjoyment to the site, most common of which was banning users to steal good content and repost it for karma, to fuel his own agenda, which include for example being paid from netflix to run advertisements as normal posts trough the subs he mods.
he's not the good, loving moderator that the article describes.
(Replying to PARENT post)
Makes me wonder what is it that people find so appealing in having moderation of subreddits as an almost full time job.
(Replying to PARENT post)
(Replying to PARENT post)
Also, their behavior deleting posts and banning users over discussion of this issue has been egregious.
(Replying to PARENT post)
(Replying to PARENT post)
Imagine being in a debate with dozens of people and being rate-limited to only posting every 10 minutes because your opinion wasn't agreed to by people doing voting.
(Replying to PARENT post)
That being said, a great number of the active mods on that platform seems to be a couple steps away from becoming power tripping maniacs. Itโs one thing to stop spam and illegal content. Itโs another to censor discussions because whatever content was posted can be interpreted as against rule 4.1B ยง2. How hard is it to leave the content up and let users downvote it if itโs not so relevant?
(Replying to PARENT post)
So much money on the table for anyone that can reinvent, but allow easy migration from that once great site.
(Replying to PARENT post)
https://jimleff.blogspot.com/2008/08/always-talk-to-mask.htm...
(Replying to PARENT post)
For some reason it even crashed my mobile browser.
As I was scrolling, more ads loaded and kept moving the text around.
(Replying to PARENT post)
(Replying to PARENT post)
My comment was seized upon by mods of the sub as:
1: Mansplaining (She didn't specifically ask for male opinions so I should shut up).
2: Racist Hate Speech (Because saying Egypt might not be perfectly safe - something I would also say about many cities in the USA - is somehow racist to Egyptians).
3: Sexist (Women can do anything that men can do and I was apparently suggesting otherwise).
I was summarily banned from that sub plus a bunch of other travel subs by the same few mods. I don't know what the answer is for moderation on Reddit but whatever they are doing right now is definitely not working.
(Replying to PARENT post)
(Replying to PARENT post)
(Replying to PARENT post)
(Replying to PARENT post)
(Replying to PARENT post)
(Replying to PARENT post)
(Replying to PARENT post)
(Replying to PARENT post)
Use a VPN, double-hop if you really care.
(Replying to PARENT post)
This has been seen time and time again in any system involving humans.
A big issue with Reddit is that it has subs dedicated to encouraging mentally ill and anti-social behavior.
These things tend to eventually escalate into the real-world where someone eventually gets hurt or killed.
(Replying to PARENT post)
I had thought working as a moderator would be a great way to help grow the subreddit's base. Offer more useful real world interaction points and basically have a big impact on Portland.
Instead what I've found is that 99% of the time the moderators are dealing with bad actors and that has to be the primary focus to keep the sub from falling apart.
It isn't just dealing with trolls or stepping into stopping out of control discussions.
It is actively performing anti-ban-evasion against people who are targeting the sub for disruption and then going after moderators that get in the way of these attempts.
There is at least one active case number with the Portland Police Department of a person that has both attempted to doxx our moderators and has gone to the home of a moderator and vandalized property repeatedly.
In this example, the person will not stop and creates new accounts every day.
While there are things Reddit can be doing to help, (such as improving tools to counter ban-evasion,) I think this problem is bigger than Reddit and focuses on lack of enforcement for digital actions that would qualify as genuine crimes of harassment if translated into the physical realm.