Reddit has been dead for a while. There is still a lot of great information hidden along the noise, but it’s very much not a community that you can belong to. Your comments will almost never be taken seriously, or even be noticed. There’s almost no point in taking part in actual discourse on Reddit. People might think this is about politics, but I really don’t discuss politics on Reddit. Instead, any topic on Reddit gets this treatment, even when the topics are mundane. Smaller subreddits do still manage to avoid this, to be fair. But at any moment any small subreddit could get new mods, get banned, or even just see an influx of new users which permanently changes its character.
Mo3 1 hours ago [-]
And the astroturfing and bots. So much in the bigger subs.
politelemon 11 hours ago [-]
Looking at the language around "upvote several pieces of content banned for violating our policies will begin to receive a warning", and comments from the admin, it is quite clear that the definition will remain subjective and can change over time.
jfengel 8 hours ago [-]
Of course. I can't imagine how you'd define such a thing objectively.
But a fair bit of content is more-or-less unanimously off limits, and it doesn't seem useful to say "I can't define it rigorously so I guess we have to allow the child torture porn". Communities are best-effort activities.
mft_ 8 hours ago [-]
I assume this is relates to the posts in recent days suggesting Reddit is now penalising users for interacting with some posts about Luigi Mangione.
As we’ve seen previously, Reddit will continue to slowly evolve in a direction that suits its corporate owners, and protests may feel empowering in the short but fail to change anything in the longer term.
In the meantime, it would be a shame[0] if this was protested using the John Oliver approach[1] only with pictures of Luigi.
It's wild to me the blatant double standard that Reddit admins and mods have regarding violence in comments.
You can crack jokes left and right about Russian soldiers getting blown up by drones or Russian oligarchs and bureaucrats being pushed out of windows and 'falling onto bullets' but if someone says the same thing about American oligarchs the ban hammer comes out.
mft_ 4 hours ago [-]
The closest I've seen to a class consciousness in America in recent times was the brief unity shown in response to the killing of Brian Thompson. People from both sides of the politcal spectrum who had suffered due to the Health Insurance industry didn't want to condemn what had happened, or outright supported it. I can fully understand how some people would be terrified by the current political divide being relaced by a genuine class divide.
It would be very interesting to understand the chain of cause-and-effect that led to Reddit implmenting this policy, and directing it specifically (it seems) at posts related to Luigi.
weard_beard 3 hours ago [-]
I recently got selected to take a survey on changes they are rolling out. I took the survey on a lark.
They are turning it into Digg. Giant ads after the first result of every content listing page pushing most results far below the fold.
Its going to cause a mass exodus.
ty6853 7 hours ago [-]
As reddit became more commercialized, somehow it turned into a place where mere opinions resulted in bans. Sometimes directly, but more often what happens is moderators allowed users with sanctioned opinions to relentlessly verbally deride those with unsanctioned opinions and then ban the target as soon as they reflected even one iota of the lashing back.
It has gotten to the point where even HN, a place full of progressive coastie techies, looks like a free speech bastion of thought diversity by comparison. I miss the pre ~2015s internet where even though everyone might hate you, you had the right to your opinion.
rmholt 7 hours ago [-]
In contrary to modern popular belief, this is not the case (at least on reddit).
Unless you are advocating genocide, murder, outright advocating for ethnic cleansing, or are violently sexist/racist, you're fine.
survirtual 6 hours ago [-]
This is not true.
When I was active on reddit, I advocated for nuclear energy using math and physics. One time, I wrote a comment calculating energy vs used land vs used infrastructure, including mining and logistics, to show how radically more efficient nuclear is than any other power source. It got little / no engagement.
That comment triggered me to check pushshift and see if I was banned for some reason. Turns out, every comment I had ever made about nuclear technology was shadow banned, even relatively innocuous ones. This was universally across all of reddit.
They don't allow advocating for nuclear energy, what else don't they allow?
One time, I wrote a historical warning about how the rich don't generally do well with massive wealth inequality during times of revolution. This was flag as violent content and I got a warning saying I would be banned if I did it again.
This was roughly ~5 years ago. How much do you think the noose has tightened since then?
Keep in mind, my comments were well thought out, posted in good faith, and respectful. I was not trying to hurt people or prove them wrong, just truth seeking and truth sharing.
It became clear to me truth is no longer allowed on mass platforms.
rmholt 6 hours ago [-]
Is it possible your entire account got shadow banned, due to unrelated reasons? Afaik it's not even possible to shadow ban a single post, but they do that to entire accounts.
EDIT: Also that's a really pessimistic leap, "my account got shadow banned (on one platform, and you don't know it was the nuclear)" to "truth is no longer allowed on (implied all!) mass platforms"
EDIT2: Also, how the saying goes, shit happens. I got banned on so many servers and forums, for random reasons. And I moved on?? Create another account if you have to, it's not like they can enforce the no multiple accounts rule well
survirtual 5 hours ago [-]
There must be some method to remove posts without informing a user and making it appear to them it is still visible, while making it invisible to everyone else (shadow removal), because that was the state all my posts related to nuclear power were in.
My posts that were humor or otherwise "low-impact" were unaffected. I had many submissions with well over 1,000 karma, but only the submissions that had no economic or political impact were ever seen.
This isn't conjecture or paranoia, it is verified, and I traced it back years once I realized it was happening. I wrote a lot about nuclear energy and I was writing to the void. That is a very cruel thing to do to someone.
gruez 6 hours ago [-]
>Is it possible your entire account got shadow banned, due to unrelated reasons? Afaik it's not even possible to shadow ban a single post, but they do that to entire accounts.
AFAIK you can do subreddit "shadowbans" by setting automod to send all posts to modqueue, and then using another rule to approve every post except the ones you want banned.
ty6853 6 hours ago [-]
You generally only get targetted like that (anywhere in life) if you both have wrong opinions and you have a sophisticated and persuasive holistic argument that wins people over. If they can prove you wrong they'll be happy to leave it displayed for all so everyone can see what an idiot you are and mission accomplished. And they already have prepared rebuttals for anything in the books or talks by prominent proponents/opponents, so you have to have innate and original thoughts to get to the point they can't use those attacks and you start persuading others. If you're just espousing what the 'greatest' thinkers of your persuasion argue, even if it's Hitler, you are generally safe because they already know how to defeat that using whatever their own greatest thinkers told them.
This is actually a very rare trait in the general populace so it makes targeting such persons fairly narrow pursuit while simultaneously if you explain it happened most people will think you are crazy.
everdrive 4 hours ago [-]
There's a meme going around which takes a metaphorically-similar quote: “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.” The meme answers the rhetorical question with an outlier example: "children with leukemia." The joke here is that although the quote could often have merit it certainly does not apply to all cases.
There are plenty of ideas which people want to censor for reasons other than that the ideas are strictly correct. Particularly when it comes to politics, a lot of ideas just speak to opinion or disposition, and there is no strictly right or wrong answer. But of course, people want to censor opinions with disconcerting frequency.
My comments here shouldn't be taken as pro-censorship. I consider myself nearly a free-speech absolutist, but the desire to censor is much more about politics and tribalism than it is about anything else.
survirtual 5 hours ago [-]
Except in the case of the arguments I make about nuclear, they were verifiably and very obviously correct. I would talk about the energy density of u235 nuclear reactions vs burning coal, the energy of a neutron vs the energy of photons, things like intermittent generators and baseload, etc. it is not controversial, and anyone with some basic background in physics or chemistry could verify it.
ty6853 5 hours ago [-]
Yes and the red pill moment is when you realize this is exactly why your speech was banned.
They will leave provably wrong stuff up as a head on pike to show you're an idiot. They will let correct but unpersuasive stuff up, because who cares. They will let correct (or just controversial) stuff already stated by someone prominent up (even if by kkk or nazis), because they already have a rebuttal canned for that to make you look bad.
What they won't let stand is a correct, holistically persuasive original argument for the wrong opinion. They have no defense for that but banning. And thus doesn't apply only to reddit.
survirtual 4 hours ago [-]
Just to clarify, by wrong opinion, you are speaking to the "authority's" opinion of what right and wrong is, as opposed to the universe's objectively right and wrong?
As in, anything that can realistically challenge an entity with power (say, energy companies using non-renewable systems like oil vs infinite / abundant systems like nuclear) is deemed "wrong"?
ty6853 6 hours ago [-]
5 years ago was when it became totally unusable and I stopped trying to find a way to use it. COVID gave a lot of people with a half ounce of power the green light to trump up 'misinformation' as murderous/violent, which was applied writ large.
gruez 6 hours ago [-]
You're conflating moderators and reddit staff. OP was talking about actions of subreddit moderators, ie. unpaid volunteers. Your list of banned subreddits reflects the actions taken by reddit staff.
ty6853 6 hours ago [-]
I was banned from all of reddit by paid moderators after an ivy league lawyer specifically targetted me, sifted through years of history for their best approach, and convinced them that my opinion on gun control was incorrect legal advice. They literally revived a ~year old thread specifically to engineer the attack on my account.
I suspect it was done due to my opinions on covid.
7 hours ago [-]
keyboard_slap 5 hours ago [-]
...or expressing the opinion that there's more to manhood or womanhood than a declaration of manhood or womanhood. I don't want to get into a debate about transgender politics here, but it should be acknowledged that such debates were (still are?) impossible to have on Reddit.
xucian 8 hours ago [-]
rip
Rendered at 21:21:12 GMT+0000 (UTC) with Wasmer Edge.
But a fair bit of content is more-or-less unanimously off limits, and it doesn't seem useful to say "I can't define it rigorously so I guess we have to allow the child torture porn". Communities are best-effort activities.
As we’ve seen previously, Reddit will continue to slowly evolve in a direction that suits its corporate owners, and protests may feel empowering in the short but fail to change anything in the longer term.
In the meantime, it would be a shame[0] if this was protested using the John Oliver approach[1] only with pictures of Luigi.
[0] not really [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65949412.amp
You can crack jokes left and right about Russian soldiers getting blown up by drones or Russian oligarchs and bureaucrats being pushed out of windows and 'falling onto bullets' but if someone says the same thing about American oligarchs the ban hammer comes out.
It would be very interesting to understand the chain of cause-and-effect that led to Reddit implmenting this policy, and directing it specifically (it seems) at posts related to Luigi.
They are turning it into Digg. Giant ads after the first result of every content listing page pushing most results far below the fold.
Its going to cause a mass exodus.
It has gotten to the point where even HN, a place full of progressive coastie techies, looks like a free speech bastion of thought diversity by comparison. I miss the pre ~2015s internet where even though everyone might hate you, you had the right to your opinion.
Have a look at Banned Subreddits at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communi...
Unless you are advocating genocide, murder, outright advocating for ethnic cleansing, or are violently sexist/racist, you're fine.
When I was active on reddit, I advocated for nuclear energy using math and physics. One time, I wrote a comment calculating energy vs used land vs used infrastructure, including mining and logistics, to show how radically more efficient nuclear is than any other power source. It got little / no engagement.
That comment triggered me to check pushshift and see if I was banned for some reason. Turns out, every comment I had ever made about nuclear technology was shadow banned, even relatively innocuous ones. This was universally across all of reddit.
They don't allow advocating for nuclear energy, what else don't they allow?
One time, I wrote a historical warning about how the rich don't generally do well with massive wealth inequality during times of revolution. This was flag as violent content and I got a warning saying I would be banned if I did it again.
This was roughly ~5 years ago. How much do you think the noose has tightened since then?
Keep in mind, my comments were well thought out, posted in good faith, and respectful. I was not trying to hurt people or prove them wrong, just truth seeking and truth sharing.
It became clear to me truth is no longer allowed on mass platforms.
EDIT: Also that's a really pessimistic leap, "my account got shadow banned (on one platform, and you don't know it was the nuclear)" to "truth is no longer allowed on (implied all!) mass platforms"
EDIT2: Also, how the saying goes, shit happens. I got banned on so many servers and forums, for random reasons. And I moved on?? Create another account if you have to, it's not like they can enforce the no multiple accounts rule well
My posts that were humor or otherwise "low-impact" were unaffected. I had many submissions with well over 1,000 karma, but only the submissions that had no economic or political impact were ever seen.
This isn't conjecture or paranoia, it is verified, and I traced it back years once I realized it was happening. I wrote a lot about nuclear energy and I was writing to the void. That is a very cruel thing to do to someone.
AFAIK you can do subreddit "shadowbans" by setting automod to send all posts to modqueue, and then using another rule to approve every post except the ones you want banned.
This is actually a very rare trait in the general populace so it makes targeting such persons fairly narrow pursuit while simultaneously if you explain it happened most people will think you are crazy.
There are plenty of ideas which people want to censor for reasons other than that the ideas are strictly correct. Particularly when it comes to politics, a lot of ideas just speak to opinion or disposition, and there is no strictly right or wrong answer. But of course, people want to censor opinions with disconcerting frequency.
My comments here shouldn't be taken as pro-censorship. I consider myself nearly a free-speech absolutist, but the desire to censor is much more about politics and tribalism than it is about anything else.
They will leave provably wrong stuff up as a head on pike to show you're an idiot. They will let correct but unpersuasive stuff up, because who cares. They will let correct (or just controversial) stuff already stated by someone prominent up (even if by kkk or nazis), because they already have a rebuttal canned for that to make you look bad.
What they won't let stand is a correct, holistically persuasive original argument for the wrong opinion. They have no defense for that but banning. And thus doesn't apply only to reddit.
As in, anything that can realistically challenge an entity with power (say, energy companies using non-renewable systems like oil vs infinite / abundant systems like nuclear) is deemed "wrong"?
I suspect it was done due to my opinions on covid.