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Reddit Responds To Calls From Moderators To Fight Disinformation (vice.com) 331

An anonymous reader shares a report: Some of the most popular subreddits are protesting the proliferation of COVID-19 disinformation and conspiracy theories on the platform. Moderators from several high profile subreddits, including r/awww, r/showerthoughts, and r/pics, are now calling on the site to do a better job of curbing the spread of disinformation. "It is clear that even after promising to tackle the problem of misinformation on this site, nothing of substance has been done aside from quarantining a medium sized subreddit, which barely reduces traffic and does little to stop misinformation," user N8theGr8 posted said in a post announcing the protests, which lists dozens of subreddits who had signed on in solidarity.

Reddit pushed back 8 hours later with a post from CEO Steve Huffman in r/announcements. It didn't mention the thread specifically, but there's little doubt it was a response to calls to ban subreddits that spread disinformation. Huffman began by saying the CDC was the best source of up to date information about the pandemic and urged people to get vaccinated. "We appreciate that not everyone agrees with the current approach to getting us all through the pandemic, and some are still wary of vaccinations," Huffman said. "Dissent is a part of Reddit and the foundation of democracy. Reddit is a place for open and authentic discussion and debate. This includes conversations that question or disagree with popular consensus. This includes conversations that criticize those that disagree with the majority opinion. This includes protests that criticize or object to our decisions on which communities to ban from the platform."

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Reddit Responds To Calls From Moderators To Fight Disinformation

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  • That's a stretch.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Vegan Cyclist ( 1650427 ) on Thursday August 26, 2021 @02:40PM (#61733231) Homepage

    "Reddit is a place for open and authentic discussion and debate."

    It may be a place for authentic, but is most infamous for the opposite.

    • by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

      Yeah, I'd even put 4chan ahead of Reddit for debate. Not only does giving everyone a vote on every comment promote circle-jerking, there is also a culture of burying differing opinions or even different expressions of concurring opinions. Even dealing with anonymous trolls is better than that.

  • If you shut down one subreddit, then trolls will just try another. Policing has to be done on a per-message basis.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by vadim_t ( 324782 )

      No, the experiment was already tested on Reddit in the past.

      If you nuke subreddits, a lot of their regulars end up leaving. Some might stick around, but if they're forced into subreddits that don't agree with the viewpoint of the banned one, they don't get to continue doing the same thing they were doing there.

      A bonus side-effect is that all the worst people tend to end up in the same alternative site, such as Voat, until it collapses under its own weight.

  • Yeah right.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by overlook77 ( 988190 ) on Thursday August 26, 2021 @02:42PM (#61733241)
    "Dissent is a part of Reddit and the foundation of democracy. " What a load of bull. Try posting something thats not remotely agreeable to the left and watch yourself get downvoted to oblivion, hiding your comment, draining your karma, or the mods will just outright ban you. I have NOT witnessed Reddit to be a very open forum for discourse and different ideas AT ALL, And this is in no way supporting COVID misinformation either.
    • Re:Yeah right.... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by rogoshen1 ( 2922505 ) on Thursday August 26, 2021 @02:44PM (#61733253)

      apparently that's just not relegated to reddit.

    • Re:Yeah right.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Known Nutter ( 988758 ) on Thursday August 26, 2021 @02:45PM (#61733265)

      "Dissent is a part of Reddit and the foundation of democracy. " What a load of bull. Try posting something thats not remotely agreeable to the left and watch yourself get downvoted to oblivion, hiding your comment, draining your karma, or the mods will just outright ban yo

      None of those are a function of Reddit itself, but a function of the users and moderators (mods are not Reddit employees or admins, they are users who happened to create a sub or who have been promoted to moderator in that sub).

      But you knew that, didn't you?

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by overlook77 ( 988190 )
        Reddit controls how reddit works. "Reddit is a place for open and authentic discussion and debate." Simply not true at all, and yes I understand who moderators are and they arent corporate employees.
      • Even as I right-wing Republican voter . . . I have to agree.

        The structure of Reddit is a bit odd. The platform as a whole does have a left lean, but that certainly can change from one sub-reddit to another, with some subs being right-wing/conservative/etc, and others have a left-wing/liberal/etc lean. All depends on who starts a particularly sub-reddit and assigns the moderators.

        That's mostly just the userbase though. Reddit as an entity mostly is politically neutral, which is why I'd agree with their CE

        • The "Blindspotter" tool from Ground News works well to get a picture of the political bent of a given sub.

          Like r/news where the majority of articles are from Left sources: https://ground.news/blindspott... [ground.news]
          and r/firearms an example on the other side: https://ground.news/blindspott... [ground.news]

          Okay, maybe we didn't really need a tool for us to know the political biases, but I like that there is a data-driven methodology to confirm that some sub-reddits are really failing to allow multiple viewpoints. Come to
    • I'm confused, are we talking about Reddit or Slashdot?
  • by hallkbrdz ( 896248 ) on Thursday August 26, 2021 @02:44PM (#61733247)

    The Disinformation definition has become - anything we don't want the public to know, 1984 style. It has nothing to do with actual data that critical thinkers can then use to make an informed judgment for themselves.

    • by Areyoukiddingme ( 1289470 ) on Thursday August 26, 2021 @04:23PM (#61733649)

      It has nothing to do with actual data that critical thinkers can then use to make an informed judgment for themselves.

      Internet randos are not critical thinkers. They just play one on the Internet. People on Reddit are not thinking critically and making informed judgements. They're posting dank memes and snickering like Muttley about it. For the lulz.

      The naive dreamers who invented the Internet thought it would enable a fantastical sharing of knowledge for the benefit of all mankind. Some of that happened. A very tiny bit of it in a sea of bullshit (and porn). The dumbest 20% of humanity are absolute fuckwits and now their total lack of understanding of all of reality is on display, because they're the loudest and most persistent.

      I'm not speaking figuratively here. I'm talking about literally stupid people, people for whom basic algebra is a Dark Art, who have difficulty reading and comprehending a sentence as long as this one. These idiots used to be buried in the larger bulk of humanity, and they swept the floors and stocked the shelves and weren't allowed to operate machinery and the small number of people who could hear their dumb ideas could easily mock them into silence. Now the Internet has allowed them to find each other and form little Enclaves of Idiocy where they reinforce each other's wildly inaccurate "hot takes", telling each other how clever they are to have discovered the truth. And not a gleam of reality ever intrudes to disrupt their little balls of fear and loathing and their vast gulf of misunderstanding.

      Not all opinions are valid. Not all people are smart. Many of those who wander are lost. Deep stupidity is not reached by the light. (With apologies to J.R.R. Tokien.)

    • The Disinformation definition has become - anything we don't want the public to know, 1984 style. It has nothing to do with actual data that critical thinkers can then use to make an informed judgment for themselves.

      Not really. People just tell you this because they are spreading disinformation and are attempting to deflect their critics.

    • by BishopBerkeley ( 734647 ) on Thursday August 26, 2021 @05:57PM (#61733941) Journal

      Wrong. Disinformation is anything that is factually incorrect. Claiming that vaccines contain microchips is not valid dissent. It's prevarication, lying, dissembling. Dissent, it is NOT.

  • by petronyista ( 6295228 ) on Thursday August 26, 2021 @02:45PM (#61733259)
    There's no better way to sabotage your future as a social media company than to wade - stupidly - into becoming an self-declared arbiter of truth.
    Reddit sees the not-too-distant halving of value of the other social media companies and is wisely steering clear.
  • Respectable (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RobinH ( 124750 ) on Thursday August 26, 2021 @02:49PM (#61733273) Homepage
    You have to respect someone who takes the attitude "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." I feel the same way about vaccinations... based on all the information I can gather and parse, getting vaccinated is the right decision, and as far as I'm concerned you should get vaccinated and I have a low opinion of you if you choose not to, and I support the right of private establishments to ban you if you can't prove you're vaccinated... but I absolutely will support your right to not get vaccinated. Your body, your choice.
    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by JackieBrown ( 987087 )

      I think the vast masses have proven that they prefer safety to freedom.

    • OK, but rather beside the point since no one actually seems to be calling for anyone to be vaccinated by actual force. Anti-vax seems largely about insisting that no one has the right to ask you to prove you're vaccinated, or deny you anything if you're not. Them insisting that "Stopping me from shopping unmasked in Walmart with no vaccine card IS forcing me to get vaccinated" is kind of the problem.
    • Re:Respectable (Score:5, Interesting)

      by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Thursday August 26, 2021 @07:20PM (#61734123)
      I fully support those who don’t want to get vaccinated if, and only if, we can track down every last person they make sick and charge them with assault to manslaughter for every case they spread with their ignorance. I’m not going to say you can’t drink any alcohol and drive but conversely you don’t get to play bumperdrunks and leave a trail of auto and human fluids splashed in a grotesque trail. Similarly, you don’t get to infect people who can’t be vaccinated for medical reasons, infect the vaccinated who are at high risk for complications, or be the reason new variants keep emerging. Jail them for life if they take another’s with their bad life choices, killing people out of willful ignorance and stupidity is a crime.
  • by CrappySnackPlane ( 7852536 ) on Thursday August 26, 2021 @02:54PM (#61733291)

    Preface: Covid is real, it's not a bioweapon, masks help, vaccines are safe and work.

    That said, why is more moderation the answer? Has more moderation helped with literally any problem?

    This just seems like the sort of good-intentioned but malignantly-idiotic whining that leads to a draconian environment where everyone has to scan their driver's license to get their one and only lifetime account. See: Facebook.

    • You make a preface that the U.S. government and other world agencies are investigating. Unknown if covid in fact leaked from Chinese biowar lab, unknown if animal origin. So, are your or I spreading misinformation to say one way or the other?

      https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]

    • See... when you link all of those statements as one large combined fact, you risk causing doubt for the parts of your statement that are true if any of of what you wrote turns out false.

    • To add onto what Iggy stated:

      vaccines are safe and work.

      https://www.chop.edu/centers-p... [chop.edu]

      Vaccines aren't always safe, and don't always work. There are vaccines that in a percentage of people caused autoimmune diseases. Being concerned about the safety of any vaccine is not misinformation. There have been vaccines that these side effects did not show up for years.

      There actually was an outbreak of Guillain Barre Syndrome that was likely tied to the Swine Flu vaccine.

      https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesaf... [cdc.gov]

      Even with all of this, I went out

    • You can recognize the people who want to control you because the first solution they think of to the problem is censorship. There are other solutions to the problem.

  • by lazarus ( 2879 ) on Thursday August 26, 2021 @02:59PM (#61733303) Journal

    Disinformation (we used to call these lies), conspiracy theories, and general trolling are profitable when revenue generation is based on views (advertising). We've known the effect trolling had on engagement since the days of bulletin boards. Reddit and platforms like it will either just pay lip service to cleaning it up, or will hide under the guise of democracy as long as it has no impact to the popularity of the platform (and hence their revenue).

    In short Reddit will do nothing unless readership drops (it won't) or they are legislated into it. And neither will anybody else.

    Remember when we used to wonder what the world would be like if everybody was connected to the Internet and had a voice? Now we know.

    • Exactly. They've done nothing to fight disinformation on the platform because it drives traffic and that's what they need to make money. The only time they've made changes in the past was when it impacted them negatively. They didn't even act to remove child porn from the platform until it made national news and was going to negatively impact their ability to attract investors and advertisers.
    • Oh, you have authoritative source on what is disinformation or not? Seems the governments of this world and their health agencies make claims and walk them back.

      https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]

      • Oh, you have authoritative source on what is disinformation or not? Seems the governments of this world and their health agencies make claims and walk them back.

        https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]

        Well, I'd start with "you'll be magnetized" "Pills meant for cattle can cure you" At least with health agencies they are basing recommendations on the data at hand, not wild speculation or anecdotal evidence. Of course, when the evidence points in a different direction all of a sudden "they were lying..."

        • Pills meant for cattle: if you want to keep emergency stash of antibiotics for a major disaster, farm animal supply is the only option. ooo, no prescription. illegal. advanced knowledge needed to dose properly... but, some smart people do it.

          Our CDC is two months or more late with info (delta and other strains, virus load on vaccinated individuals) that other better staffed country's health agencies already knew. That's near misinformation levels of badness and incompetence.

  • Dissent (Score:5, Interesting)

    by OverlordQ ( 264228 ) on Thursday August 26, 2021 @03:03PM (#61733311) Journal

    Dissent is a part of Reddit and the foundation of democracy. Reddit is a place for open and authentic discussion and debate.

    Says the guy that locked the comments.

  • by nightflameauto ( 6607976 ) on Thursday August 26, 2021 @03:07PM (#61733339)

    Let's face it, open and honest discussion online is likely a thing of the past. With calls from all sides to digitally curb-stomp anybody that's saying something some group disagrees with, and more and more large sites clamping down on speech they disagree with, the echo chambers that are left in the wake do nothing but increase the animosity between groups and isolate those groups in feedback loops of like-minded individuals. And I'm not saying that's all one one group of individuals. It seems to be universal at this point.

    So where are we gonna end up? We're already seeing the common discourse level in real life get as toxic as online discourse. Will we eventually have to actually physically be separated from those we disagree with to prevent actual violence rather than just taunting, teasing and harassment? It's gotten bad enough lately that I have coworkers referring to me as a sheep for getting vaccinated and screaming slurs at those of us that dare to wear masks in public. And these are people I've worked with for over twenty years and have been on friendly terms with most of that time.

    Is it possible to reverse course or are we so entrenched in our hatred of others that we're incapable of treating each other humanely? I don't know, but I'm getting very tired of hearing that we need to clamp down on free speech every time somebody hears something they disagree with. And yeah, I know, there's some seriously wild shit being posted online. But that type of nonsense has always existed. We relied on people in the past to sort out the crazy, stupid and dangerous stuff for themselves. Unfortunately, it seems like critical thinking is in super short supply, and the crazy is taking a much more firm footing.

    This is all going to end up in the lawbooks at some point. It'll keep escalating until we're asking the government to filter everything we witness. It's freakin' embarrassing to be a part of the human race right now. I wish I could have been a part of it while we were climbing up out of the dirt and trying to make something better of ourselves. Seems like now too many are far more interested in throwing their neighbors back in the dirt just because, not realizing that we're all being drug down to the same place because of it.

    I'm rambling. I guess it's just depressing.

    • Let's face it, open and honest discussion online is likely a thing of the past.

      Ah for the days of anonymous posting on USENET.

  • by aerogems ( 339274 ) on Thursday August 26, 2021 @03:10PM (#61733351)

    They punted.

  • by plazman30 ( 531348 ) on Thursday August 26, 2021 @03:22PM (#61733409) Homepage

    I think the problem we have now with reddit is that we have people screaming that "disinformation" needs to be banned. But "disinformation" is what they consider disinformation. For example, there is a new study out of Canada that does a bunch of number crunching and experimentation and says:

    • 1. Cloth and surgical masks are only 10% effective
    • 1. N95 masks are about 50% effective
    • 1. Social distancing is useless because COVID-19 is essentially airborne
    • 4. Wiping down surfaces does little to nothing to stop the spread of COVID-19
    • 5. The BEST THING anyone can do for COVID-19 protection is to vent the room and replace the air in it with fresh air to get all the airborne virus particles out of it before people can inhale them

    They recommend N95/KN95 masks and good room ventilation as the best defense against COVID-19

    I read the whole paper and there some really good science to back up all their claims.

    Well, a lot of this goes against current CDC guidelines. And if you link to the paper on Reddit, the downvote brigade will destroy you and you'll be reported. A lot of these people treat emerging science about COVID-19 as evil.

    I think it's everyone's job to do what they can to end the pandemic. But there's a LOT of people talking about rouding up unvaccinated people and just shooting them.

    It's very hard to have a civil discussion on Reddit these days.

    • by Trailer Trash ( 60756 ) on Thursday August 26, 2021 @04:43PM (#61733707) Homepage

      It was the same last year. I'd post studies that showed that covid (original) was less harmful to kids than the seasonal flu each year. The seasonal flu where kids still go to school unmasked, and some of them die. I'd get downvoted anywhere, yet it was just statistics. It's amazing how many people don't like facts when those facts don't line up with their preconceived worldview.

    • by swilver ( 617741 )

      The study (if it is real, haven't seen a link yet) puts numbers of certain measures. These numbers can be used to take targetted measures to lower the spread and keep it from becoming exponential (R > 1). Even a 10% effect can change an exponential growth scenario to one where the number of infections slowly dies down. Combined with other measures (which often will compound) you can avoid scenarios like we've seen all over the world with overloaded hospitals and people dying because of something as si

  • Reading and seeing misinformation and conspiracy theories being spread on social media left me feeling sad and pessimistic, which turned to anger.

    I ended up removing the apps from my phone and not visiting their websites.

    The only person I can control is myself. As for others, I refer you to the Subject line.

    • It's all well and good, until one of these stupid people kills you or someone you love. Or until hords of stupid people, manipulated and riled up by disinformation controlled by foreign ennemy nations, do something really really stupid like trying to storm the Capitol building, or worse, start a civil war that kills millions.

  • I can't help but shake my head sometimes. Do these people not have an ounce of forethought?

    They are begging for someone to duct tape their mouth shut.
  • If I have a question about how to go about taxes, or voting, or doing a permit for some property, or great ways to lose weight, or really anything that I actually want a serious answer to, I typically go to an expert on the matter in real life. So my question is, why does anyone take anything on social media seriously? Like if I walk up to some random stranger and ask what's the best way to prevent getting a viral infection, some really off the fucking wall response shouldn't be unexpected. In fact, that

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