Tell HN: Banned site-wide from Reddit for helping a fellow mod fight hate speech
The problem with this bot is that it's not user-friendly at all, so even to make it do the most basic action you need to read the documentation. Since most people are to lazy to read it, there's an official subreddit called r/AutoModerator to let people ask and answer questions about it, and I've been fairly active there.
6 days ago, I came across a post from a user that didn't understand why their AutoMod code wasn't working. I asked them to send me the code, and when they did I fixed it by simply adding two square brackets around the keywords. The code they were trying to make would remove comments that contained some common racist words. After I send them the working code, they thanked me for being helpful and added it to their own AutoMod configuration.
6 days after that, I receive a primave message from the official Reddit account saying:
> You’ve been banned from Reddit for three days for violating Reddit’s rule against promoting hate in the following content. > Link to reported content: https://new.reddit.com/r/AutoModerator/comments/w5l6sd/comment/ihhhqi2/ > Reddit is a place for creating community and belonging, not for attacking marginalized or vulnerable groups of people. We don’t tolerate promoting hate based on identity or vulnerability, and any communities or people that encourage or incite violence or hate towards marginalized or vulnerable groups will be banned.
Reddit literally site-wide banned me, an active moderator of 7+ communities, for helping a fellow moderator remove racist comments in their own community. The reason? "Promoting hate based on identity or vulnerability". No good deed goes unpunished, I guess
I have already submitted a ban appeal and I'm currently waiting for a response. Feel free to ask any questions in the comments, since I can't use Reddit I have a lot of time to answer them...
57 comments
[ 0.39 ms ] story [ 140 ms ] threadI suppose the key element to your account's suspension is that you sent keywords for hate speech via direct message. Which is interesting and totally unsurprising.
I didn't send it privately, the comment is (well, was) public and I included a link to it in this post
So you know how to prevent this problem in the future.
Maybe there is a lesson here somewhere.
But what alternatives are here? "Report" button, and human reviewing each and every instance of it? We've all heard horror stories about fb moderators burning out and getting PTSD from this kind of work.
The amount of overmoderation on the site is ridiculous. You have the site admins, then the subreddit mods, then the moderation by the users themselves, then the automatic stuff. You can still block users and filter subjects.
If you click through to their offending thread, the AutoMod profile they built has a field value of "action: report". As I understand it, that means it does nothing but forward the flagged comment to a human moderator for review. As benign and judicious a use of automation as you can get.
*edit: s/permanently/temporarily/ (sorry!)
For three days, not permanently:
>"You’ve been banned from Reddit for three days"
It's a little unfortunate, but 3 days isn't terrible, and it's a good lesson in false positives.
No, I did not. The bot would not punish the user in any way, it would simply hide the comment from other users without even informing the OP.
I'm not sure if you're understanding the situation, the bot would remove comments containing the n-word, r-word and other very insulting slurs
This is shadowbanning, and is a very bad feature of Reddit. If someone's comment or post is removed, that person ought to a) be notified or, at least, b) get the chance to see for himself that it has been removed. Fooling the poster into thinking that all is well is terrible from both UI/UX and general human being perspectives.
>I'm not sure if you're understanding the situation, the bot would remove comments containing the n-word, r-word and other very insulting slurs
Thinking that shadowbanning is a good thing is really retarded.
Punishment without awareness is not going to change behaviour. You've created a system that doesn't address the root cause, so you're creating a game of whack-a-mole for yourself.
Why do you think people should be free to call other users ni***r or re***d?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazen_bull
Why would people be free to insult users using the offensive words listed in the code I fixed? The list in the post includes words like the n-word and the r-slur
Would you be willing to share that list, rather than a couple of cherry picked examples??
The link to the list is already in the post itself, you are free to view what words the other mod wanted AutoMod to remove
This whole thread is pure gold.
Because of course.
1. Your life will be better when you reduce your reddit usage. By a lot.
2. Stop doing free work for Advance Publications, Inc., the owners of reddit.
This stuff is 21st century digital bubonic plague. Revert life to the 90s and 80s snapshot.
Apparently people like OP are lining up for this though.
If someone is breaking a real-life law, then report them. Otherwise, block them and move on with your life. You're not entitled to not have your feelings hurt.
Why should people be free to insult users using the offensive words listed in the code I fixed? The list is in the post includes words like the n-word and the r-slur, that doesn't have anything to do with censorship and such. Did you even read the full list?