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Ask HN: What can /u/spez realistically do?

9 points by _red ↗ HN
For those of you unaware, reddit is going thru another cultural revolution. Many top mods of the largest subs are upset because they feel spez isn't cracking down on 'misinformation' strongly enough.

They have either blacked out their subs, or placed stickied post at the top of the subs. They use these stickied post to push their agenda and advocate that readers move to reddit-alternative sites.

If you, the causal reddit user, comments negatively against this (ie. "this post has nothing to do with the content of this sub and is harming the site"), the mods will ban you. In effect this is their scorched-earth policy: Destroy the experience for causal users until they get their way.

What are spez's realistic options here: (a) Capitulate, (b) Remove the mods, (c) Something else?

13 comments

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[dead] draw_down
Capitulation to that will never end. To wit, what is “misinformation”? Whatever those people don’t want.

Maybe it will take drastic measures to get those people out but there really is no other choice. Who owns Reddit, some mods or the people who call themselves the owners?

I only use one small part of the site so I actually haven’t seen this at all, for what it’s worth. Those big parts of the site are complete garbage dumps of ideology, which is probably what led to this. The politics forum is just absolutely atrocious.

yann2
Remove the mods. Tantrum throwers as opposed to solution oriented folk, should not be entertained for too long or it just gets worse.
_red
Its an interesting problem and harkens back to the "99% of what you read on the internet was written by an insane person".

Normal humans have neither the inclination nor time to spend 200 hours per week micromanaging forum discussion. Thus, over time, mod control centralizes around those that do.

Point being: If he does ban the mods, eventually control will just reform around a similar group (if not the same group under different names).

Its a tough problem, and I commend spez on giving mods enough power to run their sub without much top-down interference, even if its to the point of destroying their own subs with blackouts, etc. However obviously a balance must be struck.

yann2
True about the type of people drawn to it. But I doubt he and his team worry about it as much as the mods think they worry about it. Like wikipedia they have survived quite a lot of drama in the past.
crznp
Removing the mods for a difference of opinion doesn't sound like a "free speech" position.
raxxorrax
Let them cry and set them boundaries and explain to them that they can only influence content in the spaces they moderate themselves. Reddit should limit the amount of subs one person can moderate. Ignore the blacked out subs, it will lead people to better ones.

Ban them if they continue to advocate for others to be removed.

ddtaylor
The problem will work itself out. The Internet has a way of routing around failure.
brodouevencode
Fully agree.

The reddit model of moderation has been broken from the start. The sub-land grabs and fake internet points imply a sense of authority, which itself is fundamentally wrong. Then the lack of appeals process/nuance in arguments is more along the lines of a Soviet-style purge. And honestly I'm not so sure there's ever going to be any "coming back".

ddtaylor
Probably no better example of this than /r/bitcoin
Dracophoenix
I agree that the moderation model sucks, but I disagree that the subreddit grabs are the problem. When the admins were more hands off, that allowed for people fork subreddits at their own discretion. If one sub didn't like your opinions, you're free to move on to another one. Reddit now is trying to achieve top-down Facebook-like structure with increasingly convoluted global rules and hostility towards any subreddits to are the tiniest bit offensive to their political agendas like r/waterniggas (the predecessor to r/hydrohomies).

I'm rather surprised that spez has come to the "defense" of vaccine skeptics after quarantining r/nonewnormal just last week. The cynic in me would say ad dollars are the reason and, when the money dries up, spez suddenly realized the "principles" about keeping the "wrong" people off. For the community's sake, of course.

The issue shouldn't be the noise spez's statements have generated over the past few weeks, it should the fact he can decimate any community as he wishes whether its by falsely altering content or going on a purge. But unfortunately, any time one brings up "freeze peach" on the platform, you're deemed a disingenuous Nazi.

pope_meat
Don't know where it all went wrong but I deleted my 10+ year badge accounts close to 2 years ago now.

I do not miss it.

Dracophoenix
How do you get rid of your comment data? Is there any script that can clean out your information?
Dracophoenix
I challenge the premise of your question. Steve Huffman is able to do what he wants even to the point of altering statements made by someone else's account in an unpopular sub. [1]

He's no different than the mods that are lambasting him. If anything I'd say what's happening now is a consequence of his two-faced approach to free speech: "we're for free speech" when its in his personal interest and "we've never been a free speech company" when it doesn't. The most recent rule changes regarding who's defined as oppressed are a testament to that. The mods have simply copied and amplified that strategy by brigading or blockading subreddits they don't like using autobanning anyone who has posted in them.

In short Huffman (as well as Ohanian) has done this to himself.

And in my opinion it's good to have reddit alternative sites. Since Victoria was canned and Ellen Pao went on her crusade banning subreddits left and right (supposedly at insistence of Huffman and Ohanian), at least once every year afterwards there's been a massive purging of subreddits celebrated by a large swath of users until it happens to them or a sub of their political affiliation. While some might not like Voat, Ruqqus, Saiddit, etc. for their own personal (usually political) reasons, it would be hypocritical for someone to believe its wrong to splinter off into more specialized Reddit-likes when Reddit itself, massively gained from the Digg Exodus.

[1]https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/23/reddit-huffman-trump/