Reddit's CEO Promises More Moderator Involvement in Shaping Corporate Policy (mashable.com) 115
Reddit is vowing more changes after its co-founder Alexis Ohanian resigned and requested they replace him with a black candidate. First Reddit's other co-founder (and current CEO) Steve Huffman, calls it "a request that the board and I will honor."
But in a post on Reddit yesterday, CEO Huffman announced additional steps they'll take, reports Mashable: Huffman said the company will focus on the parts of Reddit that "reflect an unflattering but real resemblance to the world in the hate that black users and communities see daily." Huffman added that the company would provide more clarity to users and moderators on where its administrators stand when it comes to racism, offering moderators a seat at the table to help shape corporate policies...
["With more moderator engagement, the timeline is weeks, not months," Huffman wrote...]
Huffman left the thread open for Reddit users to ask him any questions on the matter. At the time of writing, it's amassed over 20,000 comments. In the Q&A, he maps out a few things Reddit's aiming to accomplish this year, including publicly sharing summaries of quarterly calls with moderators, expanding its number of [moderator] councils, regularly cycling members so it can bring on more moderators, and creating a council on social justice issues (that will also host all-council calls on how the company's policies are evolving).
On Monday Reddit was accused of "nurturing and monetizing" white supremacy by its own former interim CEO Ellen Pao -- who made that critique on Twitter.
Huffman's post responded that "The majority of our top communities have a rule banning hate and racism, which makes us proud, and is evidence why a community-led approach is the only way to scale moderation online. That said, this is not a rule communities should have to write for themselves and we need to rebalance the burden of enforcement."
But in a post on Reddit yesterday, CEO Huffman announced additional steps they'll take, reports Mashable: Huffman said the company will focus on the parts of Reddit that "reflect an unflattering but real resemblance to the world in the hate that black users and communities see daily." Huffman added that the company would provide more clarity to users and moderators on where its administrators stand when it comes to racism, offering moderators a seat at the table to help shape corporate policies...
["With more moderator engagement, the timeline is weeks, not months," Huffman wrote...]
Huffman left the thread open for Reddit users to ask him any questions on the matter. At the time of writing, it's amassed over 20,000 comments. In the Q&A, he maps out a few things Reddit's aiming to accomplish this year, including publicly sharing summaries of quarterly calls with moderators, expanding its number of [moderator] councils, regularly cycling members so it can bring on more moderators, and creating a council on social justice issues (that will also host all-council calls on how the company's policies are evolving).
On Monday Reddit was accused of "nurturing and monetizing" white supremacy by its own former interim CEO Ellen Pao -- who made that critique on Twitter.
Huffman's post responded that "The majority of our top communities have a rule banning hate and racism, which makes us proud, and is evidence why a community-led approach is the only way to scale moderation online. That said, this is not a rule communities should have to write for themselves and we need to rebalance the burden of enforcement."
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Funny ain't it, written to protect blacks from the KKK ... now invoked by orange man bad to protect majority black cities from liberals. Was all irrelevant in the end, even the most politically correct mayors decided they would prefer to have a city standing to preside over and called in the evil police and national guard any way.
Though who knows how much longer the national guard will exist, they already got roped into deployment for useless forever wars for the last couple decades and now the media dumps
Re: Nurturing white supremacism? (Score:2)
It will be interesting to see how voters respond to leadership that goes out of their way to let cities burn and get looted by barbarians.
And funny how I got modded down for correcting the person I replied to about the constitution and history. We clearly live in a post-fact based world where how we feel is more important than provable objective truth.
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Watch the hundreds of videos showing police going out of their way to do the wrong thing during peaceful protests. It's amazing, I haven't seen anything this bad since civil rights days. It's like the police are a gang and someone just dissed them. You see cops marching, then one veers away to thwack someone with a baton, then several other cops see that and assume they have to no go over and help with the thwacking.
Then you see the exits from an area are being blocked off by the police even when it's ge
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The thing I don't understand is the people with signs saying "Defund the Police", telling me that they don't actually want to defund the police, they just want to reallocate funds. It's your sign, buddy. Write "Reallocate police funds" on it.
Otherwise it's all "freedom=slavery" to me.
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You might want to do some more reading yourself. Start with the insurrection act.
Funny ain't it, written to protect blacks from the KKK ...
The Insurrection Act of 1807 was written to protect blacks from the KKK, founded in 1865? That was a good trick!
Re: Nurturing white supremacism? (Score:4, Insightful)
It was amended with the Enforcement Act of 1871, aka. Ku Klux Klan Act. That specific amendment is what allows the president to send in troops when a state fails to protect constitutional rights for a part or class of its people.
Re: Nurturing white supremacism? (Score:1)
Re:Nurturing white supremacism? (Score:4, Insightful)
Accused of nurturing whatever it is we don't like. Because alternative viewpoints no longer have a right to be heard. Maybe Trump is right. You want Section 230 protection, you stay out of the editorial process. You want to run your own online newspaper, you accept the responsibility for what you print.
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"Maybe Trump is right. "
And maybe monkeys will fly out of my butt.
"You want Section 230 protection, you stay out of the editorial process."
So what you really want with your internet is either no comment sections, or more Nazi shitposting. Let us know, pls
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So what you really want with your internet is either no comment sections, or more Nazi shitposting. Let us know, pls
Are you saying that we should block Antifa/Anarchists altogether? Personally I'm in favor of that. But in an open society I just don't think that's going to fly.
BTW, some of the best boards that I post on have no Section 230 protection. Because they aren't based in the USA. Antifa wouldn't last 5 minutes on any of those boards.
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Picking and choosing what is valid speech is called publishing.
Twitter is probably the most offensive in this regard to date, but Reddit comes in a strong second.
If you want to be a publisher then you don't get carte blanche protection.
Really simple and only those are white supremacists/nazi disagree with this.
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"Picking and choosing what is valid speech is called publishing."
That's not what moderation is.
Moderation is choosing what kind of speech your platform will bear.
Forcing a platform to carry content is not free speech, it is coercion.
"If you want to be a publisher then you don't get carte blanche protection.
Really simple and only those are white supremacists/nazi disagree with this."
They aren't publishers, they are platforms. And the people who disagree with this most commonly and fervently are trolls and ot
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Really simple and only those are white supremacists/nazi disagree with this.
I see this argument a lot, for various things.
It's useless. And anyone who doesn't agree with me is a green monkey wearing a shiny, sparkly prom dress.
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No, I mean actual Nazis, not just conservacucks. Without the right of moderation, which is effectively what happens when you mandate that all comments or none must be moderated, the assholes come out of the woodwork.
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You made your choice. I don't accept your false apology.
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No, we're declaring the people Trump hired to assault protestors around the Whitehouse
I'm not sure where that picture came from*. But I suspect that the Secret Service and DC police would jump on anyone carrying that kind of hardware near the Whitehouse. And Trump would have nothing to say about it.
*Google image search just came up with a page of miscellaneous military personnel and models wearing camo.
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you stay out of the editorial process
And they do. Mods don't work for Reddit.
Re:Nurturing white supremacism? (Score:5, Insightful)
TFS is talking about changing that, is the thing. Moving the burden of moderation from the mods to Reddit itself. After all, there is a pro-Trump subreddit. Why should such blatant racism be allowed? Why should a popular site allow any disagreement or discussion of the truth? Why allow any platform of any kind for racists and science deniers? Why should anyone anywhere be allowed to say anything that a circle of rich progressives in San Francisco disagree with? Who do you think you are, disagreeing with your betters?
Re:Nurturing white supremacism? (Score:4, Informative)
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There are alternative viewpoints and then there are people who want to force you out of your own country, treat you as second class citizens or just straight up murder you.
"This knife should be in your head" is not an alternative viewpoint.
BTW here is a great explanation of what Section 230 is and why you don't want to remove that protection, written and delivered by an actual lawyer: https://youtu.be/w7tZmFfc73Y [youtu.be]
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"This knife should be in your head" is not an alternative viewpoint.
But it exists. And forcing it underground isn't going to do anyone a bit of good.
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Might help the person whose head they want to put the knife in. Calling for someone to be murdered or injured is generally frowned upon, and actually illegal in many places.
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Might help the person whose head they want to put the knife in.
Not really. Now they know that there's a threat. But if there is any grounds to it, it would happen posts or not.
Re: Nurturing white supremacism? (Score:2)
230 has been abused by organizations that want to provide a narrative and maintain legal clarity.
Hell, I would burn 230 simply because AmiRushLimbaugh supports it.
Iâ(TM)ve never seen anymore for batshit/wuhanflu crazy then AmiCrazy.
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Wait, isn't Rush Limbaugh one of those hard right radio hosts?
You must be the only person here who thinks I'm a conservative.
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here is a great explanation of what Section 230 is and why you don't want to remove that protection
Some good arguments about why immunity for hands-off policies by the information system operator is a good idea. Reasons for allowing them to curate beyond the intent of the Section 230 intent (porn, illegal content, etc) are more along the lines of "Mumble, mumble. Because reasons." At any rate, a pro-editing stance doesn't seem to have been tested in court yet. Not like the numerous cases where the service provider left something up, got sued by a third party claiming damages and successfully was protecte
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s/suppuku/bukake/
Re:Nurturing white supremacism? (Score:4, Insightful)
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come up with a rational take-down of your beliefs
The fact that you describe argumentation in such terms demonstrates that you don't know anything about it. But what else should I expect from the slashdot village idiot? The reason people don't engage your posts with rational arguments is because you have consistently demonstrated that you are not swayed by rational arguments. You demonstrate this nicely by doing the very thing you complain about. How dare anyone compare your racist, far-right beliefs to Nazism. Anyone who does so clearly must be a Maoist.
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Wow, it's exactly what I was talking about, calling people nazis as a substitute for argument. Thanks for the backup!
"Compare your opponent to Adolf Hitler. This is your heavy artillery, for when your opponent is obviously right, and you are spectacularly wrong. Bring Hitler up subtly."
-- John Podesta
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You are mistaking dissent for ignorance. Do you know who also did that?
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You might not be racist, but you stand with racists every time you respond to some discussion of their bigotry with whataboutism and knee-jerk deflection.
You might not be racist, but you stand with racists every time you vote in some scumbag politician who says nothing to denounce their own vocal racist followers, or worse yet, dog whistles to them.
You need to ask yourself what you stand for.
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We know what the corporate shitheads who tell us that they'll hire based on skin colour stand for. Racism.
But yes, I know. Intersectional nutjobs insist that as long as it's white people that are the untermensch, it's all fine, because only white people can be racist.
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You might not be racist, but you stand with racists every time you respond to some discussion of their bigotry with whataboutism and knee-jerk deflection.
You might not be racist, but you stand with racists every time you vote in some scumbag politician who says nothing to denounce their own vocal racist followers, or worse yet, dog whistles to them.
You need to ask yourself what you stand for.
What does this stand for?
https://www.pnas.org/content/1... [pnas.org]
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They look like Nazis because they are Nazis [i.ibb.co].
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Before you embarrass yourself too much, you may want to do at least a modicum of analysis of it. For one, if the guy was trying to copy the unit tattoo, he probably would have it facing in the same direction as other tattoos that really are trying to copy that, and had it in the same style of skull as well. I vaguely recall seeing a similar tattoo to this once, and the top of the skull had a dorag on it. From the picture, you can't really tell.
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Are you going to apologise and quit this website for doing the same thing that was done about a year ago to that certain marine who had a tattoo that nazi hunters who see nazis in everything and everyone thought was nazi-related when it obviously wasn't too?
Because it's obviously a different tattoo. Skull and a pair of bones is very widely used paraphernalia, ranging from pirate flag of the old to many unit insignias worldwide even today. It has to be that specific copy, and that obviously isn't it.
Sounds like he... (Score:4, Insightful)
wants to make it even more of an echo chamber. It's already bad enough in the huge politics subreddit where any negative comment about a politician that isn't white can get you banned for "racism," or if you aren't far left, then you'll probably get banned. It's supposed to be a neutral sub and was one of the defaults for years.
Re: Sounds like he... (Score:1)
Poor little hysteric alt-righters (Score:3, Funny)
It is neutral. Neutrality with regard to racism is to ban all racists.
https://xkcd.com/1357/ [xkcd.com]
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Neutrality with regard to racism is to ban all racists
Good words to say or write, but we all know it really means ban all racists, except the non-white ones.
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Anyone can be labelled racist depending on the accuser. Who is the judge?
Re:Poor little hysteric alt-righters (Score:4, Informative)
What judge? Use your own brain.
Racism is discrimination by race. It's not a subjective thing. It's an objective thing. Did you decide based on race or skin color? You're a racist.
That's the test.
Re: Poor little hysteric alt-righters (Score:5, Insightful)
Progressives claim the latter position is racist, which quite frankly blows my little mind.
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Yeah I'll bite too.
Voter suppression is a thing, it exists, and it's very often directed at areas where there are large numbers of black voters. At this point if you're denying easily verifiable facts then you are supporting the current, racially biased, status quo.
There's a word for period like that. Can you guess what it is?
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Voter suppression is a thing, it exists...
You realize you didn't make any sort of link between voter id and voter suppression, right? You're just regurgitating DNC talking points.
In every other democracy in the world voter id works and works well. It prevents disenfranchisement of voters because individual polling places can't stuff ballot boxes because the people cheating don't know whether the extra names they put down might have actually voted somewhere else.
If you think the current free for all in the US prevents cheating, then I have a b
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In every other democracy in the world voter id works and works well.
Well, you no that's not actu....
One last time: every other real democracy in the world has found that voter ID PREVENTS voter disenfranchisement.
Ironically Scotland isn't one of them. No TRUE Scotsmocracy, eh?
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Both race and discrimination are subjective. There is no distinct color that decides if someone is white or black. And a kind remark by one person can be considered derogatory if coming from another person.
If I choose to buy Sushi at a Japanese restaurant instead of a Greek one, that does not make me a racist. It would be by your narrow definition.
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Except that of course they already declared themselves racist by saying that next replacement for the guy quitting will be selected based on race.
So unless they're banning the CEO in question first, they're certainly not banning all racists.
We're reaching the levels of echo that shouldn't e (Score:1)
We're reaching the levels of echo that shouldn't even be possible. A lot of subreddits (chief among which is r/politics) were beyond repair already, but in the past week even r/science succumbed to the woke mob as well.
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I had a friend from college, born and raised in Berkeley. I was right leaning, she was HEAVILY left leaning. Knew her about twenty years. We disagreed on many things. But it was always civil.
Then, that guy drove through the crowd in Charlottesville. Lots of online anger.
She writes me a message "I'm offended you're not more upset about what happened in Charlottesville, and have realized I cannot be friends with anyone who isn't publicly outraged by it, so I'm de-friending you. You're a fascist."
Yes: I was de
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Reddit was always designed to be a bunch of echo chambers. The subreddits were created to compartmentalize.
Reddit skews left leaning because most of the users are younger, but there is still plenty of right wing stuff on there, even on the front page e.g.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Polit... [reddit.com]
https://www.reddit.com/r/insan... [reddit.com]
Ellen Pao is problematic (Score:3, Insightful)
Ellen Pao apparently believes any affront to her is a sign of sexism, taking anything she says with a grain of salt should be standard practice. Along with most other tech CEOs, she's most likely a sociopath and/or narcissist.
Re: Ellen Pao is problematic (Score:1)
When she shuts up is when.
Reddit alternatives (Score:5, Informative)
Reddit clones are popping up all over the place these days. There's one at Saidit.net [slashdot.org] (said it, instead of reddit = read it, get it?) that innovated on Reddit's model by removing the downvote button. In its place is a "funny" button, which functions like a separate kind of upvote. Another is Ruqqus.com [ruqqus.com], which is Reddit for people who can't stand how Reddit has changed. The name is a soundalike for ruckus, as in make a ruckus.
It's still the "land rush" era. Think of what Reddit was like after the Digg migration. There are plenty of subs open for claiming. It's the time when you can get to know the users and admins. Both are adding users at a breakneck pace. They've got cool features that Reddit either doesn't have or charges money for. Get in early!
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Good luck to them but many have tried and many have failed. Remember when Voat was the Reddit killer and everyone on Reddit was going to go over there? It rapidly descended into a far right hell hole and the mass exodus never happened. In fact Reddit benefited massively from from most of the toxic users going to Voat.
Saidit actually looks decent at the moment, similar mix of content on the front page, similar to Reddit in political leaning (centre-left).
Ruqqus is full of anti-SWJ rants, frog memes, links to
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Saidit actually looks decent at the moment, similar mix of content on the front page, similar to Reddit in political leaning (centre-left).
Yeah, right. Lets have a look at their frontpage: Newest post [saidit.net]
Still on the first few posts [saidit.net] Just below that one [saidit.net] Still on first page [saidit.net] I'm getting tired of linking [saidit.net]
Whether those posts are wrong or right, I doubt that reddit will allow them. I suspect that twitter won't allow material like that either.
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Reddit does allow those kinds of posts:
https://www.reddit.com/r/asksc... [reddit.com]
https://www.reddit.com/r/scien... [reddit.com]
https://www.reddit.com/r/scien... [reddit.com]
https://www.reddit.com/r/expla... [reddit.com]
https://www.reddit.com/r/scien... [reddit.com]
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Well that's great and proves that there's apparently nothing up with your freedom of speech.
Reddit has no obligation to host you, but free speech means you won't be arrested and indeed you can get up your own forum with blackjack and hookers. And uhh thanks for explaining an obvious soundalike.
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I checked out Voat and its like reddit but a mirror universe. Nothing but morons with an average age of 55 who still think Obama was a muslim.
Virtue Signaling Dweebs (Score:2, Insightful)
"Reddit was accused of "nurturing and monetizing" white supremacy by its own former interim CEO Ellen Pao -- who made that critique on Twitter."
Just my 2 cents
Re:Virtue Signaling Dweebs (Score:4, Insightful)
Co-founder Alexis Ohanian thereby asked the board to illegally discriminate based on race. And worse, whoever they hire will forever feel like they don't belong on that board, since they _know for a fact_ they were hired for their skin color. Brilliant decision, Alexis, two racist decisions in one! Fucking Adolph Hitler wouldn't be able to do a better job.
Re: Virtue Signaling Dweebs (Score:2)
"whoever they hire will forever feel like they don't belong on that board"
They will, or people like you will go out of your way to make it so?
Both (Score:1)
Both. That's the trouble with discriminatory hiring. People know the context, so you need to work twice as hard to look half as good, _and_ at the same time you will always feel like an impostor who does not deserve to be there. There's a reason why "dirversity hire" is a derogatory term.
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In college, one of my dorm-mates was black, and would always sit in the front row of classes, and was constantly asking questions of the professor. I just assumed he was really into the classes. He admitted he wasn't, and when I asked why, he said it was because everyone assumes he was there because affirmative action, so he had to work harder to get accepted on his skills.
Re: Virtue Signaling Dweebs (Score:2)
"because everyone assumes he was there because affirmative action"
People made him feel like he didn't belong, and that's affirmative action's fault?
Re: Virtue Signaling Dweebs (Score:1)
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Complaining about virtue signalling IS virtue signalling.
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Complaining about virtue signalling IS virtue signalling."
Well, no. That is like saying "complaining about people wearing crazy colors IS wearing crazy colors" or "complaining about distracting animation on a website IS distracting animation on a website."
Virtue signaling is doing something one thinks is virtuous because he or she is trying to impress other people. Complaining about it is just indicating that such non-genuine acts are useless, offensive, insulting, and/or destructive. They are not the sa
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They only posted it to signal how woke they are about the wrongs of virtue signalling and grab a cheap up-mod.
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Complaining about virtue signalling IS virtue signalling.
That sounds like it could be right out of MiniTruth.
Anyway, your accusation of racism wins you 2 virtue-signalling points, and 1 twitter point. You also get to feel good about yourself that you are shaming the egalitarians into silence.
Hitler would be proud of you.
REDdit (Score:2)
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Communists divide by identity, sex, race and religion. We can all see the results in the streets right now. If you really cared about your Antifa and BLM pawns, you wou
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From free speech hero to big brother (Score:5, Informative)
Permanent bans of users are common on even the popular default subs (such as r/politics, r/news, or r/pics) if you express remotely right-wing sentiments. As an example of notorious censorship, most users don't know when their comments are deleted (either by the automod or a real moderator), and often don't even know when their posts are removed. Even upvoting a comment or post that doesn't fit the agenda of the site admins can get you (automatically) warned and ultimately banned from the site.
Many cases of such censorship are document in the so-called r/SubredditCancer and r/WatchRedditDie sub: https://www.reddit.com/r/watchredditdie [reddit.com]. It's a wonder they have escaped the ban-hammer so far, though I don't expect that to last.
The admins have been clearly shown to strongly bias Left (due to their left-wing only [imgur.com] donations to politicians), and effectively banned the biggest right-wing forum on the site (The_Donald, who was also infamously guilty of censoring leftists within their sub, but at least they were never claiming to be neutral), and have also censored posts and comments that are 'anti-China [imgur.com]' (which started when 10-cent bought/invested in part of Reddit), even if the criticism is directed at the government and not the people.
Looks like they want to become Digg 2.0.
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What is the deal with people's crusading over a handful of huge and in some cases default subs on Reddit?
Outside of the really big subreddits, there's little sense of moderator abuse or far right/left bias. IMHO, some of the subs take themselves too seriously and over-moderate but it's more like some OCD person than an ideological crusade.
They could start by adding simple things for users (Score:2)
Reddit Corporate Policy (Score:1)
Reddit is owned and controlled by China now (Score:2)
Racism is just the current distraction they are using to divide us. Ever since they took the $300mil from Tencent, Pro-CCP posts and subreddits are promoted, while anti-CCP posts and subreddits get heavy moderation. The communist party of China are the Nazis of our time. We have allowed a dictatorship that is actively operating concentration camps to own and control the media in our own countries and use them against us. We need to take action to block all foreign propaganda and media influence - they a