Admins ban harassment subs and Reddit goes crazy

Everyone's favorite dipsh*ts have taken over as mods for /r/Polygon, because Reddit's system allows anyone who writes in to take over if the existing ones don't log in for a certain amount of time.

I'm currently squatting on GamersWithJobs and am planning on adding GWJ later on tonight. If only to keep others from grabbing them.

mudbunny wrote:

I'm currently squatting on GamersWithJobs and am planning on adding GWJ later on tonight. If only to keep others from grabbing them.

Hopefully not necessary, but better safe then sorry, I guess. My impression is that we're not amusing enough to harass for any outsiders to make a serious effort, but who knows.

One of the better articles I've read about all this: Reddit is not the front page of the internet

Reddit has a PR problem. That article completely ignores the customizability of reddit. The kinds of articles that show up on "the front page" of Reddit depends entirely on what you are subscribed to. Its overall demographics are less meaningful for the (admittedly minority of) users who customize their experience. If you only use the default subreddits, then yeah, your experience is going to be suboptimal.

But what do I know. I'm one of the 3% of users over 50.

BTW, as mentioned in the comments for the article, the gender statistics mentioned in that article are out of date.

Erm? The article isn't talking about what's on the front page of reddit at all. It's about the mischaracterization of reddit as "the front page of the Internet", not about something something reddit's front page. The point it's making is that the demographics of reddit are quite dissimilar from the demographics of Internet users in general, and articles that have wording that suggests it's a mainstay of Internet usage are missing something.

BadKen wrote:

Reddit has a PR problem. That article completely ignores the customizability of reddit. The kinds of articles that show up on "the front page" of Reddit depends entirely on what you are subscribed to. Its overall demographics are less meaningful for the (admittedly minority of) users who customize their experience. If you only use the default subreddits, then yeah, your experience is going to be suboptimal.

But what do I know. I'm one of the 3% of users over 50.

If you have to block out large swathes of a forum to make it not horrible, that sounds less like a PR problem and more like a problem with the community.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/10/89...

Theres a Penny Arcade comic about online behavior that fits here..

Erm? The article isn't talking about what's on the front page of reddit at all. It's about the mischaracterization of reddit as "the front page of the Internet", not about something something reddit's front page.

Every reference in that article to the content of reddit makes assumptions about the content based on the demographics that just aren't true. A lot of subreddits obviously reflect reddit's overall demographics, but there are subreddits that cater to the complete opposite. Making blanket statements about reddit being "a basement with a built-in bar" are unfounded without specifying what specific subreddits the author is talking about.

Stengah wrote:
BadKen wrote:

Reddit has a PR problem. That article completely ignores the customizability of reddit. The kinds of articles that show up on "the front page" of Reddit depends entirely on what you are subscribed to. Its overall demographics are less meaningful for the (admittedly minority of) users who customize their experience. If you only use the default subreddits, then yeah, your experience is going to be suboptimal.

But what do I know. I'm one of the 3% of users over 50.

If you have to block out large swathes of a forum to make it not horrible, that sounds less like a PR problem and more like a problem with the community.

Reddit is not a monolithic community. It is a group of many different communities.

Also, it is not opt-out. It is opt-in. You choose what communities you want to participate in.

BadKen wrote:
Stengah wrote:
BadKen wrote:

Reddit has a PR problem. That article completely ignores the customizability of reddit. The kinds of articles that show up on "the front page" of Reddit depends entirely on what you are subscribed to. Its overall demographics are less meaningful for the (admittedly minority of) users who customize their experience. If you only use the default subreddits, then yeah, your experience is going to be suboptimal.

But what do I know. I'm one of the 3% of users over 50.

If you have to block out large swathes of a forum to make it not horrible, that sounds less like a PR problem and more like a problem with the community.

Reddit is not a monolithic community. It is a group of many different communities.

It's got sub-reddits, sure, but it's all still Reddit. That there are parts of it that are decent doesn't negate that large parts of it are only a few steps above 4chan.

I'm with BadKen on this one. Reddit is a platform, and many things fall under that platform. There are blanket statements that could be made about the entire internet that mirror everything you could say about reddit. The difference is that reddit.com is all the further you need to look to find them, instead of looking on the internet at large, and reddit provides everyone who first goes there with a "default" experience.

Yeah, the default reddit experience is not a very good one. That is something they definitely need to work on. The default experience does mirror the average reddit user, which does *not* represent the average internet user.

It'd be nice if they could come up with some sort of customization wizard that would tailor each person's reddit front page the first time they visit. That would make a huge difference in the average experience of people visiting reddit. Right now, that average experience can be nasty.

NSMike wrote:

There are blanket statements that could be made about the entire internet that mirror everything you could say about reddit.

My thoughts on Reddit are complicated enough I'm unwilling to lock into a stance, but this is very spurious reasoning. There isn't a CEO of the internet, or a mod team of the internet. When I come to GWJ, that doesn't get lumped in with someone else visiting whatever Stormfront moved on to with the same significance as two people visiting Reddit--in the former, we are the fairly meaningless group "internet users," in the latter, Reddit users, which is something Reddit has sought to commoditize. Reddit bears some level of culpability in how their platform gets used, even if that culpability only extends to saying "Unfortunately, this is one of the many uses people have found for our platform."

I guess I'm confused about why you're so upset about that article, BadKen. It does not seem to be to be attempted to cast disparagement on reddit. My read of it is "don't write misleading stuff that suggests that the entire Internet is like reddit" (because it's not), and that it's worth noting that yes, a very large chunk of reddit is young men (because it is). That's not the same thing as saying "nobody but young men ever uses reddit" or "reddit is wrong and evil".

I also feel like it's pretty easy to see how this position extends into talking about how specific subreddits shouldn't be treated as if their demographics or aggregate opinions are the same as "reddit as a whole".

So... is it just that you're agreeing violently with Allen? Or is there something I'm missing about what she's said that you could maybe point out directly (quotes, maybe, and your interpretation of them)? Or am I misunderstand what you are saying (that Allen's article is suggesting things about reddit that are negative and not true) and if so could you explain what I'm missing about what you're saying?

Thanks.

Hyp,

It's right there in the lede:

It’s the front page of the Internet for young men. That’s it. That’s all it ever was.

That's just not true.

The whole thesis of the article reads to me like "reddit is a site for young men and nothing else... not that there's anything wrong with that." The middle section of the article rightly explains that Reddit's demographics are not the same as the internet, but it goes further than that, and makes statements that generalize the opinion of Reddit (which is a mistake), and then concludes that is not the same as the opinion of the internet.

Another misleading quote:

Reddit is not so much the generic front page of the Internet as it is its spacious, tricked-out man cave: a lot of people can fit inside, but only some people feel comfortable hanging out there.

Reddit is what you make it. You're not going to feel comfortable hanging out on Twitter if you follow a bunch of sexist, racist jerks, either.

The article also uses outdated demographics. "74% of Reddit users are men" doesn't match what Reddit itself says about its demographics in its advertiser-targeted info:

Audience

Median HHI: $67,973.30

M/F: 64%/36%

United States/International: 60%/40%

Of course, that still does not match general Internet demographics. Unless you are an advertiser that only advertises on all of Reddit, those demographics really don't matter. Reddit is not a monolithic community. There are no "Reddit moderators." There are lots and lots of subreddit moderators, each managing their subreddit differently.

The article compares Reddit to Pinterest, but there's no comparison there. Pinterest does not consist of user-moderated subgroups. Then it compares Reddit to Facebook. Again, not remotely similar.

It would be impossible to deny some sort of connection between the demographics of Reddit's narrow but vocal online user base and the tumultuousness of Pao's tenure. When Pao and her team removed several of Reddit's most vile subreddits (such as /r/fatpeoplehate) and fired popular staffer Victoria Taylor, the Reddit community retaliated with a level of vitriol that was clearly gendered in its expression. Particularly disgusting memes of Pao often made their way to the Reddit homepage.

Not only is it possible to deny it, it's logical to deny it. The tumultuousness of Pao's tenure was caused by a combination of a failure of Reddit administration to communicate with the user-moderators, and by a "narrow, but vocal" subset of the user base.

The "Reddit community" didn't retaliate for the administrative actions, a bunch of loathsome individuals retaliated. No disgusting memes of Pao appeared on my Reddit homepage, because I do not subscribe to the subreddits on which those lowlifes post.

The article rightly points out that it's a bad idea to generalize from the demographics of Reddit members, but then it goes on to generalize from the demographics of Reddit members.

SpacePPoliceman wrote:
NSMike wrote:

There are blanket statements that could be made about the entire internet that mirror everything you could say about reddit.

My thoughts on Reddit are complicated enough I'm unwilling to lock into a stance, but this is very spurious reasoning. There isn't a CEO of the internet, or a mod team of the internet. When I come to GWJ, that doesn't get lumped in with someone else visiting whatever Stormfront moved on to with the same significance as two people visiting Reddit--in the former, we are the fairly meaningless group "internet users," in the latter, Reddit users, which is something Reddit has sought to commoditize. Reddit bears some level of culpability in how their platform gets used, even if that culpability only extends to saying "Unfortunately, this is one of the many uses people have found for our platform."

I don't know what you're doing other than reinforcing my point, so I don't get why you're saying it's spurious reasoning.

It's true that at large, anyone can use the internet for anything, and make a website they host out of their basement on a spare box, but... Seriously, every useful platform DOES have a CEO. Reddit doesn't have a "mod team," either, they have admins, who do very little with the platform other than develop for it (and apparently, occasionally make decisions that really piss people off). Moderators are just other users who registered a subreddit before everyone else, or ended up being put in a moderator position.

And I don't know how you commoditize a reddit user. The traffic the site drives is useful, sure, but Google does the same. Reddit users themselves don't care to be a commodity, and in fact I'd say would rebel against being used as one. I don't think there's a bigger single user base out there who more consistently employs ad blockers.

I guess I just don't know what you're getting at.

I wrote:

Yeah, the default reddit experience is not a very good one. That is something they definitely need to work on. The default experience does mirror the average reddit user, which does *not* represent the average internet user.

Interestingly, the new (original) Reddit CEO posted on his AMA today a mockup of a new Reddit signup experience that does a good job of addressing this. It's definitely on their radar.

(big image:) https://i.imgur.com/d2qMmVm.png

NSMike wrote:

I guess I just don't know what you're getting at.

I'm getting at that Reddit has leadership and people with some nominal control in a way the internet at large does not, so while issues with both may look similar, there is a profound difference when it comes to Reddit, and I don't think that difference should be discounted.

And I think you're overestimating the autonomy of the internet.

BadKen wrote:

Hyp,

It's right there in the lede:

It’s the front page of the Internet for young men. That’s it. That’s all it ever was.

That's just not true.

The whole thesis of the article reads to me like "reddit is a site for young men and nothing else... not that there's anything wrong with that." The middle section of the article rightly explains that Reddit's demographics are not the same as the internet, but it goes further than that, and makes statements that generalize the opinion of Reddit (which is a mistake), and then concludes that is not the same as the opinion of the internet.

Another misleading quote:

Reddit is not so much the generic front page of the Internet as it is its spacious, tricked-out man cave: a lot of people can fit inside, but only some people feel comfortable hanging out there.

Reddit is what you make it. You're not going to feel comfortable hanging out on Twitter if you follow a bunch of sexist, racist jerks, either.

The article also uses outdated demographics. "74% of Reddit users are men" doesn't match what Reddit itself says about its demographics in its advertiser-targeted info:

Audience

Median HHI: $67,973.30

M/F: 64%/36%

United States/International: 60%/40%

Of course, that still does not match general Internet demographics. Unless you are an advertiser that only advertises on all of Reddit, those demographics really don't matter. Reddit is not a monolithic community. There are no "Reddit moderators." There are lots and lots of subreddit moderators, each managing their subreddit differently.

The article compares Reddit to Pinterest, but there's no comparison there. Pinterest does not consist of user-moderated subgroups. Then it compares Reddit to Facebook. Again, not remotely similar.

It would be impossible to deny some sort of connection between the demographics of Reddit's narrow but vocal online user base and the tumultuousness of Pao's tenure. When Pao and her team removed several of Reddit's most vile subreddits (such as /r/fatpeoplehate) and fired popular staffer Victoria Taylor, the Reddit community retaliated with a level of vitriol that was clearly gendered in its expression. Particularly disgusting memes of Pao often made their way to the Reddit homepage.

Not only is it possible to deny it, it's logical to deny it. The tumultuousness of Pao's tenure was caused by a combination of a failure of Reddit administration to communicate with the user-moderators, and by a "narrow, but vocal" subset of the user base.

The "Reddit community" didn't retaliate for the administrative actions, a bunch of loathsome individuals retaliated. No disgusting memes of Pao appeared on my Reddit homepage, because I do not subscribe to the subreddits on which those lowlifes post.

The article rightly points out that it's a bad idea to generalize from the demographics of Reddit members, but then it goes on to generalize from the demographics of Reddit members.

I'm struggling to understand your argument. I know it's a tired trope but it sounds an awful lot like #notallredditors.

The article is off by 10% on the m/f demographic which seems to take some of the wind out of its sails,obviously, but certainly not all of it. I agree the article draws some spurious conclusions based on that data and over generalizing, but it's still pretty clear that reddit does not equal the rest of society. That point might seem obvious as what social media or website does completely represent society? Nada.

But I don't entirely understand your point about editing the UI and joining certain subreddits. You can block/ignore/avoid the crappy subreddits? Okay. What's the next step in the argument? I'm just not getting it...

It's simple. Reddit is not a monolithic community. The article treats it as though it is. That's all.

Reddit is a bunch of different communities hosted on a single platform. Each community has its own set of moderators and its own demographics. There are over 853,000 subreddits. It makes as much sense to say "Redditors are sexist jerks" as it does to say "Feminists are cultural marxists".

I think Reddit is, to a large number of people, the default subreddits combined. It's what you get if you go there for the first time and for a lot of people it stays that way.

When /r/atheism and /r/politics were removed from their default status, that was a huge deal. /r/books was apparently at 250,000 subscribers when it was made into a default and is now at five million. Same with the other ones. I think that speaks to the power default subreddits have and how much they drive the overall population.

So to say "Reddit is what you make it" feels disingenuous to me. Yes, it can be that way, but you have to take a significant amount of positive action to curate your own experience away from the default subreddit, e.g. create an account, log-in to that account, unsubscribe from some or all default subreddits, find subreddits regarding things you care about (which has many, many sub-actions as there's not an easy way to know which subreddits are both interesting to you and non-toxic), and finally subscribe to those subreddits. I strongly suspect a lot of people, if not the majority, don't go through those steps. Especially the unsubscribing from default subreddits one.

I suppose I have an atypically low tolerance for bullsh*t that motivated me to lose the default subreddits. My Reddit experience is very positive, except when I intentionally head into murky waters, like occasionally visiting GamerGhazi and some of the default subreddits.

One thing's for sure: Reddit has a huge PR and user experience problem.

BadKen wrote:

I suppose I have an atypically low tolerance for bullsh*t that motivated me to lose the default subreddits. My Reddit experience is very positive, except when I intentionally head into murky waters, like occasionally visiting GamerGhazi and some of the default subreddits.

One thing's for sure: Reddit has a huge PR and user experience problem.

The bolded part is pretty important. That's the user experience for everyone starting out with Reddit, full stop.

To me it's as if people were complaining about the Call of Duty multiplayer community and you argued that their points are invalid because your clans aren't like that and no one HAS to play on those public servers. It's great that you're having a good experience, but that doesn't invalidate the criticisms.

BadKen wrote:

Reddit has a PR problem.

This is true. (As can probably be seen in this thread.)

Arthur Chu weighs in, with his usual good sense of history and context. More damning for Reddit as a corporation, but makes the point that many of the major subreddits who went dark were specifically trying to protest the sewage overflow they get from the nasty places.

There's the bar analogy again. Collusion! Yellow journalism! Ethics!

Coming back at it from the other side, my current feeling are that this situation sucks all around. Reddit, despite its problems, does have its positive places and safe spaces. The safe spaces particularly: there are a lot of tiny little subreddits that escape the nastiness by their obscurity but which provide support to people dealing with difficult problems. While there are specific sites out there for things like, oh, children with abusive parents, the large user base plus the semi-anonymity of Reddit has created useful support groups. Of course, those support groups are also vulnerable to being brigaded by the scum that also use the site, though their relative obscurity and low-profile often keeps them from being a target.

As bnpederson said, when they changed the defaults it made a huge difference to the feel of the front page (and to a certain extent the rest of the site) at least on my occasional visits. Seemed like it vastly reduced the degree to which it was clogged with things like the kind of naive new-convert atheism that deliberately tries to annoy and offend everyone else or dubious political rants or the like. And replaced it with cats, but that's a given.

Really, this is kind of the ur-argument about Reddit, recapitulated everywhere it gets discussed, including this thread: unsubscribe from the defaults, some parts are bad, there are different groups of redditors, etc. That it keeps being said often enough to become a recurring meme is probably reflective of something, anyway.

It's interesting to read all the articles linked from the chuqui.com article. This past week was obviously a huge fail for Reddit. The blogosphere loves to pile on and kick something popular when it stumbles. However, I think pontificating about the death of Reddit is premature. The company has taken on some pretty serious problems in the past and made it through okay.

Something else is missing in the reporting and that is the fact that while there was a lot of extreme sh*t slinging going on, Reddit admins have said that most of the feedback from users was actually positive and supportive. The positive messages coming from most Reddit communities have been conveniently ignored by the proclaimers of doom. They have largely been written off as spin control, but while some high profile subreddits shut down in support of /r/IAmA, smaller subreddits generally opted to avoid the politicking and drama.

Gina Bianchini's article on re/code (which I spotted in the chuqui.com list of articles) offers up some expert advice from an expert at managing massive communities like Reddit. She does a great job of describing how to do it right, with the perspective of having been a CEO managing a somewhat Reddit-like service. Without calling out Reddit directly, her article very effectively highlights things they're doing wrong.

I'm actually surprised Reddit has made it this far on the backs of its volunteer moderators. On paper, it shouldn't work at all, but somehow it does. It might be lovely if Reddit would hire an army of Certises to moderate the default subreddits, but I don't think that's going to happen.

Honestly, after reading through the first AMA from Reddit's CEO, I am less optimistic. He seems to be clinging to some of the worst ideas pointed out in Chu's Daily Beast article. He is fanatically anti-censorship, and went so far as to say he didn't think messages should be able to be completely deleted. Several users and moderators stepped up to reply why that is a horrible idea. Hopefully he'll pay attention to the experts in the community as it functions now, and not the way it worked when he first founded Reddit years ago.