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Questions Raised about Quality of Reddit's New Moderators After Protest-Related Purges (arstechnica.com) 131

Posted by EditorDavid from the off-track-vetting dept.
Reddit's forum about home food canning used to have two moderators with science-related master's degrees. And Reddit's home automation forum used to be moderated by a former IT worker with decades of networking experiencing — and some training from a professional electrician.

After the great Reddit protests, all three were removed from their positions. But now Ars Technica asks whether Reddit's replacement moderators will be as capable of spotting dangerous advice? In response to concerns that the new r/homeautomation mod team could overlook posts with dangerous misinformation, one moderator requesting anonymity pointed me to the subreddit's sidebar, which has a disclaimer about the dangers of electricity. However, the disclaimer is only visible on old Reddit. The mod doesn't know why...

One of the top complaints I've heard about the Great Reddit Mod Purge is the company's alleged disregard for replaced mods' expertise. The swift, contentious nature of the mod replacements meant that old mods often didn't share advice with new mods. Meanwhile, the users Reddit chose to replace protesting mods may not have been properly vetted. That includes one of the new mods of the 3D-printing-focused subreddit r/ender3, who requested to only be referred to as the subreddit's top moderator. This person replied to a post by the Reddit employee going by u/ModCodeofConduct and requested to mod the subreddit as a "joke," they said. The user got the job despite telling me, "I have never touched a 3D printer in my life, and there is zero activity on my Reddit account related to 3D printing...." [T]hat mod will step down eventually, "as the joke is starting to wear off." But the story suggests that new mods weren't selected with the utmost care...

None of the forcibly removed mods I spoke with have worked with or plan to work with replacement mods to pass on knowledge gained through years of experience... In addition to lost knowledge, new and old mods are also dealing with the loss of third-party apps considered helpful for moderating.
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Questions Raised about Quality of Reddit's New Moderators After Protest-Related Purges More

Questions Raised about Quality of Reddit's New Moderators After Protest-Related Purges

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  • So which is it? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Are you a moderator to keep things civil and engaging, or a moderator to control content? The former is arguably more important than the latter.

    • Re:So which is it? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Sunday September 10, 2023 @11:55AM (#63836866)

      From an engagement standpoint, civil seems to come at a cost to engaging.

      Social media tends towards pissing you off so you feel obligated to fight back. It engages you by targeting your worst social instincts. Fight for that upvote, get angry about that downvote, don't let that idiot get more people paying attention to them than you when they post a faulty 'correction' to one of your posts, etc.

      I would assume Reddit's goals are "get as many eyeballs as possible" and "remove content that gets in the way of that goal or has a significant legal cost associated with it". I don't think 'keep it civil' is even on their radar as something to consider. Moderators might have different personal goals, but in the end - as we've seen - they'll obey Reddit's secret rules or be replaced by someone who will.

      • Re:So which is it? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ocean_soul ( 1019086 ) <tobias DOT verhulst AT gmx DOT com> on Sunday September 10, 2023 @12:52PM (#63837006)

        I don't think reddit's goal is to get more eyeballs. Rather, it seems to be to temporarily maximize certain arbitrary metrics until they get to an IPO. Eyeballs could be such a metric, but I don't think it is one they care about (or else they are even more incompetent than I think they are). I think they are mostly pretending to have great plans and ideas, in order to convince investors that they *will* attract eyeballs *in the future*, after the IPO.

      • Completely agree with this - on Reddit, in many groups if you offer a sensible-but-not-conflict-inducing opinion, you get voted down. People like the conflict, to the point where you are punished for not taking part in it.

      • Social media tends towards pissing you off so you feel obligated to fight back.

        Fuck you no it doesn't ass hole... ...waiiiittttt

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jhoegl ( 638955 )
      You literally said the same thing.

      If you do keep things civil and engaging, then you are effectively controlling content.

  • For canning, just stuff your fruit or vegetables into a jar and simmer over low heat for a few hours.

    For electical things, stick a fork in it until it's done.

  • Oh my, questions raised! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 10, 2023 @11:45AM (#63836838)
    This reminds me of how worried everybody was about boomers retiring where I work. It's a strange situation being in GenX because the transition ended up being so fast - before Covid I was still maybe younger than average, but I come back after working at home for a year plus and suddenly most of the boomers are gone and replaced by millenials. Now I'm definitely on the older side and I'm finding it does change how people relate to me. Frankly it is harder to find technical work now.

    Before this huge turnover there was a tremendous amount of consternation by the boomers about what would happen when their collective experience walked out the door. So what did happen? Life went on. It is a lot different now. But is it worse, or better? Or does it even matter? I don't see any simple answer to the question.

    Reddit, similarly, seems to be grinding on.

  • Reddit was never perfect (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Sunday September 10, 2023 @11:45AM (#63836840)

    But at least some people moderating cared and to some degree motivated by their passion for their forum's subject matter.

    Now those people are replaced with ones whose only qualification is that they were willing to take the job and eat a shit sandwich from Reddit to do so. What could their motives be other than "for the lulz" or "to enjoy wielding arbitrary power over other Reddit users"?

    If the moderation sucked before, it must be downright awful now.

    • Not only was Reddit never perfect, but chances are it shouldn't have existed to begin with. If we had RFCs for a Reddit-like service instead of corporate controlled walled garden, we wouldn't be in this situation in the first place.
      • We weren't in this situation in the first place. We did have RFCs for reddit-like services, NNTP being the obvious example. Those failed because of the inherent problems with anarchy which drove most people away. A new RFC isn't going to fix it.
    • [onlyhalfjoking]The new mods seem like high-school virgins trying to run a cougar cathouse.[/onlyhalfjoking]

    • You've described 99.999% of moderation on the internet both on Reddit and on other forums. The real newsworthy thing here is that there were a tiny handful of places which were moderated by experts in the field.

      The change isn't significant for reddit or the internet. It's devastating for that one sub but rather that sub is now in line with what is considered normal for the rest of the internet rather than any kind of proclamation of doom.

      If the moderation sucked before, it must be downright awful now.

      Almost no moderators on reddit have changed. For all the news stories

  • Oh no! (Score:3)

    by Berkyjay ( 1225604 ) on Sunday September 10, 2023 @11:49AM (#63836850)

    What will we ever do without....checks notes....expert moderators?!?!

  • Push button... (Score:3)

    by Kelxin ( 3417093 ) on Sunday September 10, 2023 @11:52AM (#63836858)
    Person says this, push button. The world is literally becoming the world from the movie "Idiocracy".

  • Quality? (Score:2)

    by Chas ( 5144 )

    Excuse me. But Reddit mods have ALWAYS been a gaggle-fuck of assorted randos with varying motivations and adherence to quality.

    Any lies you've told yourself about their "quality" are just you deluding yourself.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      It's not lies, it's marketing. Just read it carefully:

      >Reddit's forum about home food canning used to have two moderators with science-related master's degrees

      Science-related master's degrees? So it's something that is utterly irrelevant to subject matter, because if it was relevant, it would've been specified.

      >And Reddit's home automation forum used to be moderated by a former IT worker with decades of networking experiencing — and some training from a professional electrician.

      So the first tier

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by ArchieBunker ( 132337 )

        Improperly canning food can kill people. Hence the mods having science degrees.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Chas ( 5144 )

        "It's not lies, it's marketing."

        Toe-may-toe.

        Toe-mah-toe.

        Simply because someone has a background in a relative (or sorta-relative) field, regardless of how extensive said background is, doesn't mean the person is qualified to ADMINISTER said forum in a fair, impartial, or even professionally correct way.

  • Reddit is done (Score:3)

    by furry_wookie ( 8361 ) on Sunday September 10, 2023 @12:10PM (#63836916)
    Reddit is done.

    It went from stinking, to pure shit. The quality of content has gone through the floor and most of the useful people have left the site to never come back.
    • Where did they go? Be useful to know or did they just disappear.

    • It went from stinking, to pure shit. The quality of content has gone through the floor and most of the useful people have left the site to never come back.

      Good thing this is slashdot where we don’t know anything about things like that.

    • One the one sub you visit sure. But back in reality nothing on reddit has changed. 100% of the well over 100 Reddits I follow had no change in moderation, no change in content and no change in activity, including technical ones.

      Even when the big scary news was going on they were talking about 10-100 subs depending on the topic of discussion, out of over 100k active subs.

      In other news the RPM sensor in my car died yesterday leaving me stranded on the highway. My prediction: Cars are over, they are all dead.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kfh227 ( 1219898 )

      I was wondering if there is a new site that people are using.

  • ...are used to supervising people whose jobs they have never done. It doesn't even strike them as an oddity; they are convinced that an MBA qualifies them to act as a "leader" in any situation. So of course, they'll say yes if someone who doesn't own a 3D printer volunteers to moderate a 3D printer forum.

    Also, in their heads, "moderation" means "getting rid of anything that might be offensive or that the lawyers might worry about". It has nothing to do with improving the quality of content.

  • This actually happened to me. I forget the name of the subreddit, though.

    The discussion was about some protest where people were blocking the roads and several of the protestors had guns and were pointing them at drivers.

    So I posted, "I would have dropped my truck into four wheel drive and driven over them like speed bumps."

    A couple of hours later, "You have been permanently banned from r/echochamber for inciting violence".

    I consider driving over someone pointing a gun at me as self defense.

    • That's because internet tough guys are annoying and tedious.

      Out of interest how did you get your truck out of your mom's basement? Is it small enough to pick up in one hand and carry up the stairs?

  • Reddit is a toxic shithole (Score:3)

    by leptons ( 891340 ) on Sunday September 10, 2023 @12:37PM (#63836976)
    ...and the mods have only amplified that. The mods over there are toxic themselves, most of them just enjoying the power to perma-ban anyone for rEaSoNs, or really no reason at all. They ban the person being attacked and not the person doing the attacking. They will ban you if you question anything they say, even if it's 100% false. And this was all before the API debacle. Reddit mods should have term limits, and/or be elected by the communities they serve. But no, they are mods for life and can do as they please and they are mostly what ruins reddit aside from all the countless trolls and shitheads. I guess in a way it's a good thing because it's so toxic I spend less and less time trying to help people out with my 40 years of experience and knowledge in the domains I have a degree in. Sometimes redditors thank me, and other times mods ban me for correcting the shitheads that don't know shit about shit. It's really become a hive of awfulness and misinformation, ruled by assholes.

  • Burn it down please... (Score:3)

    by OneOfMany07 ( 4921667 ) on Sunday September 10, 2023 @12:48PM (#63836996)

    They ignored their true value. Reddit is dying. And it's their fault.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      That keeps being asserted. Perhaps it's true, but I remain a bit dubious. OTOH, I've never found it desirable enough to create an account, or even to browse frequently, so I've no way to judge whether it's getting worse. But I have a strong suspicion that those who post about it on another forum are, mmmm, a selected sample with a strong bias in the selection.

    • Reddit is dying.

      This story is about one sub out of 138000 active subs. If we take every Slashdot poster's claim at face value that reddit is dying based on every story about reddit subs and assume they are all dead, we'd lose about ... 150sub a year, so you're right, Reddit is dying. We can enjoy its funeral in the year 2943.

  • Moderation sucked before and sucks after. Moderators grow power hungry over time and ban anything they don't like, making each subreddit an echo-chamber.

    Reddit should learn from slashdot and simply hide unpopular comments by default, but don't ban them.

  • Need a way to 'vote' for mods - reddit is dangerou (Score:3)

    by takochan ( 470955 ) on Sunday September 10, 2023 @02:04PM (#63837166)

    So in my city, the city reddit group mods are wildly progressive / left wing. Posts & threads that are conservative, (or even just moderate like I am) are regularly deleted by the mods, giving the reddit a far more leftish slant than the city population actually is. There needs to be a way to vote, or unseat mods that censor groups like this.

    Someone (apparently new to reddit) a few weeks ago actually posted a question asking why the city reddit was so left wing as most people in town he knew were not like this, and that he did not understand how this could be. Not surprisingly an hour later his post got mod-deleted as well.

    Reddit is an important force now in shaping opinions in cities / communities, so much so that a lot of traditional media (newspapers,TV stations) draw on it for their own stories and slants.

    There needs to be a way to vote for mods, so that they reflect the actual views of community and to ensure that they do not politically censor, as frequently happens these days.

    Otherwise, a very small group of people can lead the direction of thought and opinions in a city (sort of like happens on the internet in China), that aren't reflective at all of what the majority of people think, or would like to discuss.

    • People should go back to usenet and self moderate their own posts using kill files etc this reliance on mods is no good. It is inherently going to produce bias. Everyone needs to be able to mod etc oh wait that also what the (manipulated) up down votes were meant to be about but they gamefied it and people manipulated it

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by chas.williams ( 6256556 )
      I'm sorry, reality has a leftist bias. /s
    • Conservatives on my city sub make the same complaint. But as a regular there I often see the posts before they're removed, since we only have a few mods, who aren't obsessively on reddit all day, so it's often hours before one of them checks in. Turns out it's just like Facebook where the whiny pissbabies claim they're being persecuted over mainstream political views, but quite clearly stepped way over the line into vulgar name calling, slurs, advocating killing trans people, spouting conspiracies about lib

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dddux ( 3656447 )

      It feels so weird to be social-democrat these days, like I am. Many people will immediately label you woke and whatnot, and I disagree with so many things these so called "lefties" stand for. I still say I am a social-democrat because I am exactly that, and the ideas I stand for are based on logic, reason, humanism.

      I just wanted to say this. Slashdot is a rare place on the internet where people are still mostly reasonable so nobody will think I'm feeble minded or something for being SD. Weird, weird times.

    • There needs to be a way to vote, or unseat mods that censor groups like this.

      No there doesn't. You need to understand your city's reddit isn't run or owned by your city. It is the vanity project of the person who started it, nothing more. Find another forum that discusses matters about your city and you may find a different political viewpoint.

      You're literally advocating forcing your view on someone else's project. Make your own forum.

  • Testimony of a mother and grandmother in her lawsuit against VA school [twitter.com] that advised her child that she was transgender and a boy without notifying her parents, causing her to be bullied, threatened, groped, etc.

    The girl ran away and was then sex trafficked by pedophiles. When she was found, the state took custody of her because the grandparents were not sufficiently affirming.

    She was then placed as the only female in a state boys home, where she was again raped and bullied, and when she ran away from
  • You are getting exactly what you paid for.

  • The show 90 day fiance has a couple.

    And I couldn't figure out if the woman was a guy (trans). So I went on the shows reddit and asked. And a mod locked my thread because it was anti LQBT or whatever.

    I messaged the mod basically saying WTF. It's anti-LGBTQ to ask if someone on a show is trans?

    WTF is wrong with this world. Turns out yes .... the girl is trans.

  • I think when the main subs went dark in protest of reddit's shortsighted shiving of usability, I've noticed a lot of "clone" subs for spam content.

    AITA now has clones at AITAH, amitheasshole, amiwrong.

    There are more "rateme" subs than there used to be.

    Some subs like wholesome, damthatsinteresting, Imthemaincharacter and other what I call "generic content" subs are at least 50% spam or automated accounts. Some users call it out but it looks like reporting it doesn't do much.

    The old advice about reddit is mor

  • /r/Canning is a fantastic resource for science based recipes.

    There are tons of groups out there with dangerous canning advice and I hope /r/Canning doesn't end up like them: "well grandma never died so this recipe is ok" is a great way to end up with Botulism.....

    It's a great day to be C. Botulinum...

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