
Reddit’s Politics Section Bans Salon, Mother Jones, HuffPost for Bad Journalism - wikiburner
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/11/01/reddit_politics_r_politics_mods_ban_mother_jones_others_for_bad_journalism.html
======
revscat
This episode exposes a weakness in Reddit's overall structure, namely the
opaque process whereby moderators are chosen. When domains are banned
completely and against the wishes of the broader community it shows that
Reddit's otherwise democratic processes can be fairly autocratic.

The solution is a system where users can vote on who is a moderator. Between
this and /r/worldnews Banning of Russia Today it is apparent that moderators
have far too much power over the content of various subteddit's.

Such voting could be limited to once per month, and two users who have a
certain karma. There might even be an opportunity for a competitor site which
does this very thing.

Edit: The number of moderators should be a function of the number of
subscribers as well.

~~~
Raphmedia
If users were really disturbed by that change, a new subreddit would simply be
created which allow these domains.

~~~
selmnoo
There's a reason premium domain names go for a high price: having generic-
words for domains is big value. Similarly r/politics is a big deal. Gaining
traction on a new subreddit would be a big issue in and of itself even if one
set out to create a new politics subreddit.

I'm really enjoying, by the way, that Mother Jones is banned. Mother Jones has
a self-alleged left stint to it -- but at least they come right out and say
it. Contrast that with Rupert's WSJ (hah, its /op-ed/ pieces are right now on
r/politics front page!)

Since having been bought by Rupert WSJ been leaning more to the right [1], is
WSJ going to get banned by r/politics too now?

[1]:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/business/media/14carr.html...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/business/media/14carr.html?_r=0)

~~~
001sky
_Since having been bought by Rupert WSJ been leaning more to the right_

The WSJ is far more liberal than it was a generation ago.[1] The WSJ is sort
of Bloombergian in its outlook. Also, Murdoch is not American. Most people
consider the UK Conservatives left of center of even US democrats (eg, signle
payer healthcare), so again even if Murdoch was pushing the US toward the EU
right, it would be moving the the US left. (Another reason why these words are
sort of ill-advised). Of course, he's actually Australian. So YMMV.

[1] And frankly the NYT link is arguablly an opinion piece.

~~~
selmnoo
> Also, Murdoch is not American. Most people consider the UK Conservatives
> left of center of even US democrats

Uhmmm, you do know that Fox News is also owned by Murdoch? And clearly it is
thereby evident that the logic you're operating on is not really working?

Second point, Murdoch is Australian. Right wing of Australia, in parts, can be
quite comparable to America's right wing. Consider the considerable opposition
to immigration policies, there being lots of racist activity (foreigners being
referred to as "boat people" \-- something that was a key issue in the last
election cycle). Gina Rinehart, Australia's richest person, is routinely in
the news saying ridiculous things, like how people should work for $2 a day
[1]. But all of this is actually immaterial, since we shouldn't be
generalizing. It doesn't matter what popular politics are in Australia or UK,
Murdoch could have radical or reactionary views no matter where he is from.

[1]: [http://articles.latimes.com/2012/sep/05/business/la-fi-mo-
ri...](http://articles.latimes.com/2012/sep/05/business/la-fi-mo-richest-
woman-pay-20120905)

~~~
001sky
see my reply to e40

------
tptacek
It would be funny if the standards for /r/politics stories became more
rigorous than the one for HN.

~~~
zokier
Seems to me that the standards became more arbitrary than rigorous.

~~~
bstrand
The ban list changes are pretty clearly ideologically driven, not arbitrary.

~~~
001sky
That's not clear. The list is rather more interesting than what you (or the
article's author) suggest. Its also rooted in logic (arguable, but laid out
ex-ante). Some of these are also autobanned on HN
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6657066](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6657066)).

[eg] _The following is a list of major domains that have been banned by the
moderators of /r/Politics and listed here in the interest of transparency:

    
    
        aattp.org
    
        alternet.org
    
        amazon.com
    
        americanthinker.com
    
        avaaz.org
    
        b4in.info
    
        beforeitsnews.com
    
        blacklistednews.com
    
        borderlessnewsandviews.com
    
        breitbart.com
    
        breitbartunmasked.com
    
        change.org
    
        citypaper.com
    
        constitutioncampaign.org
    
        courthousenews.com
    
        crooksandliars.com
    
        dailybail.com
    
        dailycaller.com
    
        dailycurrant.com
    
        dailykos.com
    
        dailypaul.com
    
        democraticunderground.com
    
        deviantart.com
    
        dirtyuglypolitics.wordpress.com
    
        drudgereport.com
    
        eclectablog.com
    
        ecominoes.com
    
        facebook.com
    
        funnyordie.com
    
        Gawker and all affiliates
    
        generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com
    
        heavy.com
    
        heritage.org
    
        hotair.com
    
        huffingtonpost.com
    
        inagist.com
    
        indiegogo.com
    
        informationliberation.com
    
        infowars.com
    
        isidewith.com
    
        lifenews.com
    
        linkedin.com
    
        littlegreenfootballs.com
    
        mediamatters.org
    
        minx.cc
    
        motherjones.com
    
        myspace.com
    
        nation.foxnews.com
    
        nationalmemo.com
    
        nationalreport.net
    
        nationalreview.com
    
        nationsmith.com
    
        Newsbusters.org
    
        newsmakeup.wordpress.com
    
        newsvine.com
    
        newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/
    
        njspin.com
    
        omegle.com
    
        pensitoreview.com
    
        petitions.whitehouse.gov
    
        photographyisnotacrime.com
    
        policymic.com
    
        politicalwire.com
    
        politicususa.com
    
        politilady.com
    
        pollcode.com
    
        powerlineblog.com
    
        prisonplanet.com
    
        rawstory.com
    
        reason.com
    
        redd.it
    
        reddit.com
    
        redgage.com
    
        rightwingwatch.org
    
        salon.com
    
        signon.org
    
        smirkingchimp.com
    
        techdirt.com
    
        thebackbencher.co.uk
    
        theblaze.com
    
        thedailybanter.com
    
        thegatewaypundit.com
    
        theonion.com
    
        thepetitionsite.com
    
        therightscoop.com
    
        thinkprogress.org
    
        townhall.com
    
        truth-out.org
    
        twitchy.com
    
        twitter.com
    
        upworthy.com
    
        vice.com
    
        voiceblaze.com
    
        wallstreetonparade.com
    
        weaselzippers.us
    
        wikimedia.org
    
        wikipedia.org
    
        wnd.com*

------
stefantalpalaru
It's not Reddit's "politics section" but one of the many subreddits -
independently managed forums, each with its own policy.

This distinction should be obvious to anyone familiar with the platform and a
more accurate title would be "the /r/politics subreddit bans..."

~~~
hackinthebochs
People love to say this, but a critical look at the structure of reddit shows
how little this argument matches reality. Reddit is a _strongly cohesive_
group of sub-forums. When millions of users are driven to subreddits by
reddit's choice of defaults, when popular subreddits are driven more traffic
by r/all, when linking to other subreddits is a part of the culture, etc, all
of this points to a strong coupling. It is disingenuous to claim that
subreddits are completely independent and thus one cannot claim reddit as a
whole bears responsibility for its content. Yes, they are independently
managed, but there are a thousand other ways in which the strong cohesiveness
is created.

This cohesiveness creates responsibility among the larger subreddits to the
userbase as a whole. Unfortunately the rules of moderation don't recognize
this and as a result you end up with essentially arbitrary users who have had
massive amounts of power dumped in their lap through accident of timing
(rather than proof that they have the capacity to cultivate a large
community). Unilateral decisions are made and their userbase (that they had
little to no hand in creating) is forced to suffer as a result. Reddit really
needs to rethink how massive subreddits that are/were defaults are moderated.

------
danso
Site-wide bans really rub me the wrong way. It implies a very simpleminded,
idealistic understanding of organizations, as if all the writers and editors
were a single hivemind -- as one spams, so do all the others. But the reality
is more complicated than that, and while there are pragmatic considerations at
play here, it's sad that there can't be a more granular-kind of ban, because
each of these organizations put out some fine works of journalism, no matter
what your gut reaction to the organization may be.

Huffington Post, for example, won a Pulitzer last year for an extremely
important (and still undercovered) topic:

[http://www.pulitzer.org/citation/2012-National-
Reporting](http://www.pulitzer.org/citation/2012-National-Reporting)

As far as HN goes, I wish HN could remove the site-level ban on Buzzfeed. Yes,
mercilessly flag the shit out of its "23 Gifs about some Linkbait topic"
articles, but they've been investing some money and resources into serious and
original work.

They have a longform section:
[http://www.buzzfeed.com/longform](http://www.buzzfeed.com/longform)

They were the employer of Michael Hastings, the late-investigative reporter
who died in a LA car wreck:
[http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/michael-
hastings-r...](http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/michael-hastings-
rolling-stone-contributor-dead-at-33-20130618)

And they recently hired one of my former colleagues, Pulitzer Prize winner
Mark Schoofs, from ProPublica, to lead a new investigative team:

[http://jimromenesko.com/2013/10/21/mark-schoofs-leaves-
propu...](http://jimromenesko.com/2013/10/21/mark-schoofs-leaves-propublica-
to-head-buzzfeeds-investigative-unit/)

Then again, you could always argue that BuzzFeed's (and their linkbaity peers)
good contributions aren't yet enough to outweigh the burden of modding their
junk.

------
antr
The second to last comment says it all:

 _This sort of violates the point of Reddit, right? Users are supposed to
upvote material they find interesting, rather than have editors sequester
content they find relevant._

~~~
abat
Only if Reddit.com blocked the sites.

Each subreddit is its own privately moderated world. Some subreddits only
allow self-posts, which means you can't post third party sites at all. Some
subreddits only allow scholarly journals. Some subreddits filter based on
political bias.

Everyone chooses what subreddits they want to subscribe to, and if you want a
different set of rules you can create your own subreddit.

~~~
a3voices
That's true but r/politics is a default subreddit.

~~~
nknighthb
Not only has r/politics not been a default for a while now (at least a couple
months, I think), it wouldn't matter if it was -- default subs are still not
managed by the Reddit admins. How a sub is run obviously _can_ influence which
ones are chosen as defaults, but _being_ a default doesn't itself change
anything.

------
dageshi
I would hazard a guess that it's more to do with the reaction of the
commentators on r/politics to the articles these sites put out than anything
else. Here on HN there are certain topics which tend to descend into pointless
roundabout arguments and typically these tend to disappear off the front page
fairly quickly.

I'm guessing the mods got fed up with policing the same tedious/endless/toxic
conversation and decided to kill off the major causes of them.

------
austenallred
It seems quite ironic that this was written in Slate - I have seen just as
many examples of bad journalism from Slate as from HuffPo/Mother Jones.

------
ilamont
Does HN do this for certain source that have been flagged too many times, or
otherwise considered low-quality?

~~~
wikiburner
My impression is pg has banned some sources manually:

Huffingtonpost.com - for linkbait blogspam.

theonion.com and buzzfeed.com - off topic entertainment.

gawker.com and its other domains - general sleaziness.

pg might want to consider unbanning Buzzfeed, though. In the past year or two
they've added tons of reporters who do pretty decent long form articles you
would expect to see on Slate, The Atlantic, or Forbes, and the risk that HNers
will upvote "The 50 Greatest Cat Photos of All Time" is probably pretty low.

~~~
te_chris
You can hate Gawker all you want, but I find they consistently produce great
prose that I enjoy reading and often find educational and valuable. Not all
the time, but you can't write off the entire org just because of defamer. Sure
it's snarky, I appreciate that sometimes though, especially when you're
writing about something as pathetically retarded as the US govt. shutdown or
Sean Parker's wedding and his ridiculous defences hence.

------
minimax
It's good to see Slate standing up for its competitors.

------
awt
This is great. Salon has just gotten so bad. The series of editorials bashing
Sam Harris were really over the top. Every day I see articles on Salon that
are so biased it's just hard to stomach.

------
diogenescynic
The moderators of Reddit take bribes.

~~~
meepmorp
> The moderators of Reddit take bribes.

Provide evidence for this assertion.

> Also, Reddit is owned by Conde Nast and most of those sites blocked are
> competitors to Conde Naste's publications. Conflict of interest.

Reddit is not own by Conde Nast. It was spun off into an independent entity in
2012.

~~~
diogenescynic
"Independent"

>Reddit, Inc. remains wholly owned by Advance Media, Condé Nast’s parent
company, and the board will include Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian, Condé
Nast’s president Bob Sauerberg and its CTO Joe Simon.

[http://www.wired.com/business/2011/09/reddit-spun-
out/](http://www.wired.com/business/2011/09/reddit-spun-out/)

Have you spent much time on Reddit? There are lots of stories removed and the
justifications given are rather weak. It's either personal politics or they're
taking bribes. Whatever it is, the moderators are abusing their authority
which I don't seem to recall anyone agreeing to. It's a poor system where one
moderator can shut out the voices of thousands of users.

~~~
meepmorp
But:

[http://blog.reddit.com/2013/08/reddit-myth-
busters_6.html#in...](http://blog.reddit.com/2013/08/reddit-myth-
busters_6.html#independent-reddit-inc)

> Then in 2012, reddit was spun out into a re-incorporated independent entity
> with its own board and control of its own finances, hiring a new CEO and
> bringing back co-founder Alexis Ohanian to serve on the board.

And from just below that:

> reddit has 3 sets of shareholders: The largest shareholder is still Advance
> Publications. The second-largest set of shareholders are reddit employees.
> In the spin-out that occurred in early 2012, Advance voluntarily reduced its
> sole ownership to that of a partial owner in order to put ownership in the
> hands of current and future employees.

So, not sole ownership by Conde Nast or it's parent corporation, and an
independent board and management.

Now:

> There are lots of stories removed and the justifications given are rather
> weak. It's either personal politics or they're taking bribes.

Or the stories are shitty and people refuse to acknowledge that fact. Or maybe
just politics. Or some reasons neither you nor I have managed to figure out.
Which is why I asked for evidence of an assertion that there's bribery going
on, because it's not obvious that's what's going on to a non-conspiratorially
minded person.

> Whatever it is, the moderators are abusing their authority which I don't
> seem to recall anyone agreeing to.

It's a privately run website. You agree to the moderation system by deciding
to use reddit. If you don't like how the company chooses to manage things
(i.e., through moderators) then stop using reddit.

------
minimaxir
It's worth noting that /r/politics is only the 13th biggest subreddit, by
number of submissions. It's a relative drop in the water.

[http://i.imgur.com/9FLPgsW.png](http://i.imgur.com/9FLPgsW.png)
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjPFdCURhZvddGQ...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjPFdCURhZvddGQzd0dIQkk1aXRRRkxEY3g0ZmQtWGc&usp=sharing)

~~~
CaveTech
Number of submissions is a bad metric, number of readers per submission is
much more telling. /r/politic only has 13k readers, but /r/politics has over 3
million. Blocking these domains will have a relatively large impact as far as
referrals from reddit are concerned. How big of an impact to their viewership
in general, it's too hard to say.

~~~
minimaxir
Incoroporating number of subscribers may be skewed though since the default
subreddits auto-subscribe, and even active users might not opt-out.

------
ferdo
I suspect that reddit's management is looking for the kind of audience that's
perfectly content just staring at a TV screen no matter what's on. This
appears to be an active push to chase away people with higher functioning
intellects.

The market for dumb is huge. I can't say that I blame them for going after it,
but I won't be one of their users anymore.

------
xacaxulu
Good. The Puffington Host is nothing but linkbait.

~~~
charlesism
I like that the columns get progressively less intelligent from left to right.
If you ever finish the entire third column, call an ambulance immediately. You
may have suffered a stroke.

------
zokier
At least it's just one sub-reddit this time instead of the site-wide ban they
implemented last time.

~~~
redthrowaway
The site-wide ban was for gaming the system and buying votes, not "low-quality
journalism". That was the admins telling content sites to fuck off and stop
hiring voting rings to cheat reddit. This is the mods of /r/politics
(ostensibly) trying to increase quality on their sub.

~~~
sanskritabelt
Which sites were banned on grounds of reporting about reddit protecting that
"violentacrez" pervert?

~~~
redthrowaway
None. Some subreddits banned Gawker, not for "reporting about reddit
protecting" anyone, which they didn't, but for posting what was then only his
suspected real name and encouraging an internet-wide witch hunt which resulted
in death threats, the man in question being fired and his marriage ending,
etc.

You might claim that that's what he deserves for moderating subreddits whose
content you don't like (I'd disagree), but it could easily have been a case of
mistaken identity and an innocent man's life would have been ruined. _That 's
why witch hunts are bad_, and that's why Gawker was banned from those
subreddits whose moderators felt, as I do, that encouraging that kind of
behaviour is immensely irresponsible and should not be tolerated.

------
dragontamer
I thought Reddit was full of Libertarians who were against censorship?

~~~
a3voices
They're mostly against _government_ censorship.

~~~
baddox
Or really, any censorship applied to property by anyone other than the
property owner. Reddit (specifically, the physical servers running the site)
is private property, so any rules Reddit makes (or allows the moderators of
its subreddits to make) probably won't be considered objectionable censorship.
If the government, or any external entity, forcefully censored Reddit, that
would likely be considered objectionable censorship. Compare it to the
government forcefully preventing a physical newspaper from publishing certain
things, versus the editor of a newspaper choosing which articles to publish.

