
Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment - admiralspoo
https://www.dailydot.com/debug/reddit-moderators-quit/
======
bredren
I am a freshman moderator of /r/portland.

I had thought working as a moderator would be a great way to help grow the
subreddit's base. Offer more useful real world interaction points and
basically have a big impact on Portland.

Instead what I've found is that 99% of the time the moderators are dealing
with bad actors and that has to be the primary focus to keep the sub from
falling apart.

It isn't just dealing with trolls or stepping into stopping out of control
discussions.

It is actively performing anti-ban-evasion against people who are targeting
the sub for disruption and then going after moderators that get in the way of
these attempts.

There is at least one active case number with the Portland Police Department
of a person that has both attempted to doxx our moderators and has gone to the
home of a moderator and vandalized property repeatedly.

In this example, the person will not stop and creates new accounts every day.

While there are things Reddit can be doing to help, (such as improving tools
to counter ban-evasion,) I think this problem is bigger than Reddit and
focuses on lack of enforcement for digital actions that would qualify as
genuine crimes of harassment if translated into the physical realm.

~~~
ryandvm
Hacker News suffers from the same problem. We have folks like dang (God bless
him) manually dealing with assholes. Seems like we could solve these problems
with technology, but here we are two decades into the 21st century and we
still have humans cleaning the pools.

I'd be interested to know if actual forum moderators think that we could solve
the bad actor problem with algorithms...

~~~
staycoolboy
Hello, bad actor here.

I only use Hacker News and Reddit. And I always manage to get banned every few
months, so I guess I'm a "bad actor".

Usually I start off OK. I can rank up 1000 points on HN or 20k karma on Reddit
quickly because some of the discussions are interesting and non-inflammatory
and I have interesting things to say.

But then some topics veer into domains that make me angry (hello politics), or
I find a comment inappropriate or unfair, or mod behavior hypocritical. And I
share that in a post that gets flagged or downvoted, and I get banned.

It is hard to detect because I think anyone has potential to become a bad
actor in the eyes of a mod. There is no such thing as an unbiased mod. They
will rub some people the wrong way with their comments or actions.

Some personality type's are just not compatible with what mods want to see in
their well-tended gardens. I've never stalked or hounded anyone, and I've
disagreed with dang's assessment of my posts once or twice, (FYI DanG is a
paid mod, not a volunteer, which is probably why he's so calm about it, even
though he get's riled too: read the New Yorker article about him) but this
appears to be a problem techies cannot solve. Why do I say this? Because it's
been going on since the 80's with Usenet. Almost 40 years of trolls, and tech
hasn't solved it, but it has created some systems that have worked to keep the
weeds out of the gardens. But gardens still need weeding.

~~~
loceng
I've long argued that the downvote is terrible for civil discourse, I've had
to tread carefully and be warned many times when I comment on it - including
writing in-depth constructive criticism and not simply whining.

It's strange to me that especially on a technology forum discussing the
negatives or pitfalls of certain mechanisms is being suppressed, censored -
just like with politics, as politics is inherently intertwined with everything
including non-action.

~~~
sokoloff
The upvote/downvote thing was way, way worse when vote counts were shown per-
post. That went away years ago and I think the current system seems to work
pretty well when viewed through a macro lens. (In the sense of "is this a good
community overall?" and "would it likely be worse if the up/down voting were
entirely removed?")

I'm on another forum that opted for an up/down vote system and showed counts
per-post much like news.yc used to. It created so much drama and anxiety that
people were openly antagonistic towards each other over what amounted to fake-
internet-points.

The solution the admins came up with over there was "keep the counts shown
publicly" but also "make public the specific votes that were up/down on any
given post" (with an anonymization of all historical downvotes before the
policy change, but not afterwards). Within days, the community adapted and it
was a huge net benefit, IMO.

~~~
loceng
What benefits do downvotes provide over just an upvote sorting the best
content to the top and ability to report a link or comment for some greater
infraction than difference of understanding?

~~~
sokoloff
Downvoting for being blatantly inaccurate or blatantly anti-community seems a
worthwhile community-sourced signal for the posts of bad actors (whether
temporary or permanently bad actors). This should absolutely factor into the
sorting and eventual hiding of sufficiently negative posts.

For people who think of themselves as good actors, I will reflect on posts
that attract downvotes and try to figure out if I should have been more
constructive on a given post. (I don't "care" about the score per-se, but I do
care about the community that I'm part of and if people are telling me that
I'm being an asshole on a given post, I should reflect on that, decide if I
agree with them, and if I do, to change next time. (Often, I think my content
was fine and someone just disagreed and used a downvote to express that.
That's not how I use downvotes, but if they do, so be it...))

------
eganist
Relationship Advice lead-ish mod here. We were one of the subs "called out" as
being controlled by Gallowboob with the original post and subsequent reposts.

We (buu700 and I) added Gallowboob some years back largely to have insight
into how other teams modded their subs at a time when we were growing quickly
and needed to know what to do to keep up. While useful in meeting _that_ goal,
we quickly realized it was pretty meaningless for /r/relationship_advice
because of the nature of the questions we were getting. The only sub like ours
is /r/relationships, and we each differentiated from each other by having
different rules and content creation controls.

As best as we know, Gallowboob enjoys the place and is pretty decent at
modding, so we're pretty happy to have him. Most mods burn out quickly because
of how dark the questions get as well as because of how meaninglessly violent
people become when their posts are modded.

\---

Separate comment on an item in the story:

> Allam believes his time on the site has made him a more “paranoid” person
> and led him to develop “borderline PTSD.”

Moderating Reddit's larger subreddits is _absolutely_ capable of resulting in
PTSD-like symptoms. I've been dealing with some on and off after a post some
years ago where somebody who requested advice followed through with the best
course of action only to find that his wife killed their kids soon after. And
Reddit has absolutely no support system for things like this.

~~~
ramphastidae
Why do you free work for a for-profit social network, especially if you say
yourself that the work negatively impacts your mental health and that the
community you are moderating is toxic?

What are you getting out of this?

~~~
twic
> Why do you free work for a for-profit social network

They don't. They do the work for a community they're part of. The social
network hosts that community, and tries to make a profit doing so.

I organise a meetup that's held in a pub (well, not at the moment). People
coming to the meetup spend money on the pub's beer and pizza. Am i doing free
work for a for-profit public house?

~~~
friendlybus
Yes you are. Social organizers, advertisers, trend setters, ect frequently get
free product, kickbacks or some money for their 'work'. That's the work you
have done.

It's not your intent to do work and it's probably not the pub owners desire to
pay for meetup organizers, but regardless of your and the pub owner's intent,
work has happened.

~~~
infogulch
Ok, so in addition to the community getting value out of it, the pub
benefitted _too_ , that's just called win-win. Why does the pub have to lose
in this situation for you to be ok with the result?

~~~
three_seagrass
They didn't really claim the inverse, just that any form of community
organizing inside a private for-profit business profits the business, making
it free work for them.

It's one thing to organize a bake sale in a public park, but when you choose
one pub over other competitors, and they profit from it, you're doing work for
the pub for free.

This is why experienced community managers works with businesses to get prices
for the event discounted, or set up an agreement for profits to go towards the
event.

~~~
infogulch
I don't disagree that incidentally involving a business in a community's
activities benefits ('does work for') the business. But that doesn't mean that
the business absorbs all the value a priori and the community no longer gets
any value.

I'm sorry I wasn't clear, this point is not directed at friendlybus, but to
the general sentiment upthread (e.g. ramphastidae) that seems to assume that
because reddit is benefiting from the existence of the community therefore the
community cannot benefit from the existence of reddit. The underlying reason
why is because individuals benefit from the community.

~~~
three_seagrass
Nobody is saying that a for-profit business absorbs _all_ the value. Is your
premise that if the community gains value from an action, then that action is
justified no matter who else profits from it?

~~~
infogulch
My premise is that if a community and individuals in it benefit from
organizing themselves, then it's reasonable for the business that the
community chose to host their interactions to have some amount of profit.

Also I would question if reddit actually makes much profit from individual
communities like r/relationshipadvice, especially compared to the pub scenario
which I find generally acceptable.

------
gwern
This article doesn't actually address any of the questions (eg how does he
have all this time?). Note that it's on the public record that Gallowboob has
worked for social media marketing companies, eg
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/fernandoalfonso/2016/06/01/cash...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/fernandoalfonso/2016/06/01/cashing-
in-karma-how-a-former-landscape-architect-turned-his-reddit-fame-into-a-
career/)

> The Upvoted story never materialized; Reddit administrators were still
> digging out from under a deluge of drama including revelations about online
> harassment from its former CEO Yishan Wong and the sudden departure of
> current CEO Ellen Pao. With no job, Allam spent the next six months crafting
> the following cover letter and applying to jobs. In February, Ohanian’s
> advice paid off. Allam, better known on Reddit as gallowboob, had landed a
> full-time executive gig with the United Kingdom-based media company UNILAD.
> He got the job thanks to his Reddit prowess. > > ...Allam is a social media
> executive at UNILAD, an online media organization that “amassed a Facebook
> following of over 12 million fans, 30 million monthly unique visitors to the
> website and over 1 billion video views a month,” states the company on its
> site.

~~~
ppod
The article is also borderline misleading, as initially I thought their real
names had been posted. All that was posted was a list of which users are
common moderators of large subreddits. If they are getting abuse to their
accounts, the problem is the abuse, not the list.

~~~
arprocter
Agree - "Outed" implies he was doxxed, but per link in the article his name
was known in 2016

------
BitwiseFool
I downloaded Reddit Enhancement Suite and it has a feature that marks the
cumulative amount of upvotes you've given a user when you see a post of
theirs. It is absolutely eye-opening just how much content is posted by the
same few dozens of usernames. GallowBoob is the most infamous but to focus on
him would be a mistake. It's pretty clear to me that the vast majority of
content on Reddit is heavily manipulated and artificial.

~~~
koboll
Or... maybe they just post good content?

You yourself said the extension marks the cumulative amount of upvotes _you
've_ given a user. So, unless you yourself are engaged in this conspiracy to
inflate GallowBoob's upvotes, then all this is evidence of is that GallowBoob
seems uniquely skilled at finding and posting viral content.

~~~
andrewzah
He also is paid to post on reddit.

He also submits posts dozens of times, deleting them if they don't gain
traction quickly.

People don't dislike gallowboob and others because the content is necessarily
bad... it's just inorganic and lame. I want to see content from other regular
users, not power posters working for firms.

~~~
this_user
He has also been repeatedly caught abusing his moderator status to gain more
karma. This works by suppressing, or outright deleting, posts made by other
users before they can gain traction, and then immediately reposting their
content with his own account. And he is by far not the only power mod who is
using this tactic.

------
1024core
Reddit just hasn't scaled well, and it looks like the operators of Reddit have
no interest in scaling it properly.

Case in point: the moderation system. Now, if you're passionate about some
niche topic, and create a sub for it and become the moderator, then fine; you
rock. Things work well for you and your subscribers.

But if you're a sub of a large interest area (say, the country of India). How
do you moderate there? How do you accept the diversity of thoughts and
opinions, many of which run contrary to your own, but are perfectly valid in a
diverse society?

Currently, /r/india has a bunch of moderators with a severe political stance
(I won't go into specifics here, but I've been banned from it several times).
They will warn you and ultimately ban you if you don't toe their "moderation"
line. So on the one hand you have the "in" group of people threatening
violence and harassing people; and on the other, you have the complement set
of people getting banned for using words like "naive" (happened to me). There
current moderation system (whoever started the reddit, and whoever they
blessed, get to be moderators; sortof like a monarchy and a feudal system) is
horribly out of date in today's world.

Here's how I would fix it: every year, have an election of moderators. People
get votes proportional to their karma (or upvotes or some function thereof,
which could heavily penalize bad posting behavior) earned since the last
election. And the top N vote getters get to be moderators for a year.

~~~
MattGaiser
> Reddit just hasn't scaled well, and it looks like the operators of Reddit
> have no interest in scaling it properly.

Has anyone scaled online moderation well? Facebook, Twitter, Stack Overflow,
etc. all struggle with moderating their communities.

~~~
threatofrain
People blame FB for social media woes, but I feel that FB is different from
the other social networks in that it’s the world you fully curate and manage.
If FB is giving you grief, that’s people on your green list giving you grief.
If you need FB to come in to manage that, then you’re basically saying you
can’t even handle the agency involved in freedom of association.

~~~
buzzerbetrayed
I half agree with you. If the "grief" that Facebook is giving you is from you
not liking the posts you're seeing, then yeah, unfriend some people and move
on.

Censoring private chats (among plenty of other sketch practices) is something
entirely different though. I never foresee myself wanting to send
"joebiden.info" to a friend on Messenger, but the fact that Facebook has
decided I'm not allowed to seems problematic.

------
iratewizard
Reddit's top user in the sense that he reposts to farm karma and moderates
over 1000 subreddits. He is an opportunist seeking power. Generally, he is
disliked by a large portion of reddit. Spamming reddit at that scale to become
self appointed "top user" has a major impact on the site, and it's for the
worse when it dilutes the content on a site. Unsurprisingly, there are several
accusations of him selling his influence to other companies.

~~~
intopieces
> Generally, he is disliked by a large portion of reddit.

Huh? 98.1% of users don't post [0]. The user mentioned in the article has the
most points of anyone, meaning their posts have the most votes. That doesn't
indicate dislike. Quite the opposite, actually.

Was there a poll about this user to gauge sentiment?

[0][https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/b5f9wi/let...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/b5f9wi/lets_hear_it_for_the_lurkers_the_vast_majority_of/)

~~~
nwsm
That's an incredibly naive perspective on media to take.

If national news stations get high ratings does that mean people necessarily
_like_ the people generating or publishing the content? Is it impossible for a
medium to generate interest and attention while actively attempting to exploit
or manipulate its viewers?

Most users do not notice the poster at all when upvoting a thread. Notice the
top level thread [0] here talking about Reddit Enhancement Suite and the
epiphany that comes with monitoring which accounts one is passively upvoting.

[0]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=23258721&goto=item%3Fi...](https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=23258721&goto=item%3Fid%3D23258425%2323258721)

~~~
intopieces
>If national news stations get high ratings does that mean people necessarily
like the people generating or publishing the content?

I think national news stations are not an apt comparison, since they have
faces. This user, for all intents and purposes, exists only in text and non-
personal image posts. For that reason -- the lack of "personal connection"
that voice and face provide -- upvotes are reasonable proxy for "like" and
"approval".

I contend that people don't "dislike" this user specifically, but actually
"dislike" the idea that the content they are consuming comes not from many
original minds, but a few minds copying the same content over and over. As I
pointed out in my original comment, _this is the entire platform!_ What people
dislike is not the user, but the entire system.

In that regard, it is possible for a medium to generate interest and attention
while actively attempting to exploit or manipulate its viewers, because that's
what Reddit does. It's a classic attention merchant.

------
MildlySerious
While this whole situation is a mess and nowhere near black and white I'm
sure, painting Allam in particular as a victim is leaving out a lot of detail.

He is not only known for being a reddit power user, he's also infamous for
abusing his mod powers, and being provocative and elitist towards people
calling him out, mocking, trolling or banning them. He took over and wiped out
a sub that tracked his abuse of mod powers. On the big subs he's controlling
people got banned frequently for calling him out, long before this more recent
drama. These whole theatrics have been going on for years. I've been targeted
by him in the past, sadly I can't dig it up because reddit's comment history
only goes back so far.

~~~
dorkinspace
Additionally, much of that "precious" karma he has is from gaming reddit. He
will (re)post something and if it doesn't gain traction in a short amount of
time, he'll delete it and repost it. He does this over and over until the post
takes off. In the past, it would be fun to watch his profile and see posts
jump from "posted 30 min ago" to "posted just now" over and over again.

~~~
MildlySerious
Case in point. I was digging around a bit after my initial comment and found
this post[1]

It's crazy how little I found about well known stuff. When trolling and
provoking he also deletes his own comments once they get downvoted too much,
and I could hardly find anything that documents it, even though it's far from
a secret

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Against_Astroturfing/comments/ans1h...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Against_Astroturfing/comments/ans1hf/daily_submission_history_for_one_selfdescribed/)

------
thebouv
So, I don't get it.

Why does it matter if a few volunteer mods manage a ton of subs?

Isn't it hard to do? So they have a hard job? And it's volunteer?

And .. what? I don't understand the outrage directed at mods I guess.

Note: I'm a light Reddit user. I follow a handful of subs. And I can't name a
single mod of any of them. Maybe this is more meaningful for people who spend
more time on the site and are more involved in their particular subs? What,
they just bash heads with mods sometimes?

~~~
BitwiseFool
As a moderator you have the power to control what people see - subscribers and
visitors alike. To me, it's easy to see how moderators with an agenda can
curate content to match their views. It also wouldn't surprise me if some
moderators are compensated - under the radar - by influencers and marketers.

~~~
commandlinefan
When I first started on Reddit like 10 years ago, it leaned pretty libertarian
(pro Ron Paul, pro free speech, etc.). I noticed over time that it leaned
farther and farther left, and I wondered what had happened to all the previous
users. Then there came a conspiracy theory that a handful of users had gamed
the moderation system to take control of the tone of the site overall -
_especially_ the one that's the topic of TFA. There seems to be more and more
evidence that the conspiracy theorists were right all along.

~~~
jboog
I started on Reddit about a decade ago also.

Early reddit was a lot more like current HN. You're right you'd see more pro
Ron Paul and libertarian stuff. Then the site went mainstream.

Users on the internet are more liberal than the general pop. Add that to the
fact that Reddit up/downvote system does a terrible job of allowing
unpopular/controversial views to reach the top.

Those same Ron Paul fans are all in r/conservative or r/The_donald, or other
conservative subs now. There are way more now than there ever were.

You don't really need a conspiracy theory when the very nature of the site and
the internet explain what happened really effectively.

~~~
Mirioron
> _Those same Ron Paul fans are all in r /conservative or r/The_donald, or
> other conservative subs now. There are way more now than there ever were._

Is this true? I hold quite a few libertarian beliefs and those conservative
subs don't seem any more inviting than their left wing counterparts. It's so
much about partisanship that it's off-putting to me.

~~~
camel_Snake
The conservative subreddits have definitely experienced a tonal shift since
Trump's candidacy. I would pop by occasionally for news/discussions and the
change is extremely noticeable to even infrequent users like me.

Smaller political subs are probably your best bet. things like
/r/moderatepolitics or /r/tuesday

------
zahma
Reddit has turned into a cesspool. I’m sure the majority of users are great,
honest and open minded, but you can’t keep the internet outside the walled
garden forever. And it only takes a handful of bad actors to ruin it for
everyone.

As frustrated as I’ve found myself on Reddit, to the point I’ve all but quit
using it save for some video game stuff, I still can’t imagine how mods can be
bothered to put up with bad actors, trolls, whiners, and fools. Everyone
checks out at some point —- and as a normal user, I can and I feel no
compunction about letting the conversation devolve, but when you rely on
volunteers to do the policing, it’s going to happen more often and with harsh
consequences. And you can see on many subs that absent strong moderation,
discussion on anything remotely contentious devolves into an ugly free for
all. Even if the thread is locked or certain comments get deleted, it’s too
little too late, and the damage has been done to civil discourse.

This article has me thinking more broadly about the internet and the future of
online communities. Large platforms can’t thoroughly patrol every nook and
cranny without unreasonable amounts of employees. And yet it’s never been more
important to have fair and timely moderation on serious issues. Machine
learning might have a role to play here, but it’ll require some sort of human
oversight to provide a “starter” or some context within which a system can
determine what can be censored. What else is left? Unmasking everyone isn’t
going to happen for good reason. The internet is in dire need of a police
force, and volunteerism isn’t sufficient.

------
pgrote
I understand why mods of smaller subreddits do it. They are passionate people
looking for a community. The volunteer efforts they put into it help them and
the community.

I do not understand why mods work for free on the huge subreddits. Abuse, spam
and more would make the position horrible.

Reddit needs to start paying folks to do this job.

------
MattGaiser
People love the idea of decentralized control, but that is not how people
willing to make the effort are allocated. We see this on Reddit, on Facebook,
and we see this in open source.

On Reddit (I am not a mod but friends are) mods burn out quickly. Many people
have never seen the horrible behavior that goes on in the background.

Same thing on Facebook. I moderate a small 800 person group, one which is
private and has mostly pre-screened people. We burned through so many mods
over the years and the worst things we encounter are insult wars as nobody is
going to post porn or graphic violence with their real life account.

In open source, the heavy lifting on a lot of projects is done by just 1-2
people. Sure the project might have 30 contributors, but it is those 1 or 2
who dedicate their evening when a major bug is found to fixing it.

In all these cases, the work is mostly done by whoever is willing to do it.
Over time, people who find the work stressful quit and those who don't end up
taking on an enormous amount.

~~~
Mirioron
The issue is that we know reddit moderators play politics. Subs are taken over
or subverted. Having control over a sub can give you an opportunity to control
what people see and read. If you then find out that a small group of
moderators moderates a large number of the big subs then it makes the
decentralized control into centralized control.

------
Jonnax
I stopped being an active user of Reddit about 5 years ago.

I felt that it wasn't a forum that was conductive to interesting discussion.

But also, I know it's a cliche to talk about the eternal September effect, but
somehow it feels like the discourse in the site is even more stupid today.

At least to me it seems like it's just useful as a problem and answer site you
Google on.

But now it seems like to some of users they feel like the website is the
definer and trendsetter of western culture.

Instead of a website where people post memes and shit post.

Like what am I reading? That there's a shadowy cabal of moderators?

Who cares if they're running the big subreddits?

Even who cares if they're being paid by companies to post things.

Reddit is website that does little moderation themselves (except when it gets
them in the news) and rely on volunteers to actually manage the site.

What do expect? That people are going to spend 10s or hours a week for the joy
of community? So they can make Reddit's employees and shareholders money?

When it comes to Facebook people say "if you're not paying for it, you're the
product"

But it's the same for Reddit. But this time it's the users which are taking
advantage?

Oh no.

But perhaps I don't understand the seriousness of Reddit.

~~~
as1mov
I think most people take issue with the fact that reddit, one of the most
trafficked websites in the world, has some of their biggest subs controlled by
a few people. You can easily use this power to shape/influence public opinion
of a large number of users.

~~~
asdff
More worrying to me is the great effects that botnets can have on reddit post.
If you can get a post off and running early, it will appear on hot and then
get to the front page, and grow exponentially. I mean, the internet research
agency is no big secret and this sort of work is their bread and butter 1.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency)

------
uncletaco
I was a moderator on /r/blackpeopletwitter and the amount of racist and
outright vitriol we received was fucking insane. There are people out there
who really have it out for BPT and we banned dozens of users daily who were
legit there to only drop the n word with a hard r and make jokes about monkeys
or something.

I deleted my reddit account in a panic after someone sent me a DM saying they
knew where I lived and I saw a guy wondering around my apartment complex with
his phone out like he was recording. I never want to be highly visible on
reddit again.

~~~
ativzzz
I feel the safest way to use Reddit is to create a new account for every
subreddit/community/subculture that is in any way tied to real life, and
absolutely minimize the amount of information you give out in each one by
keeping it relevant to that particular topic.

If you have some niche gaming/entertainment/etc interests, use an account
specifically for those without ever delving into personal details.

Have a separate account for BPT, where again, you minimize sharing personal
details.

If you have a hobby that has more real life interaction (for instance is
location based, or is small and you use personally identifiable information),
use a separate account and minimize sharing anything not related to the
topics.

Obviously if reddit gets hacked/info is leaked good luck, but controlling
available information about yourself seems increasingly mandatory to protect
yourself from the crazies if you want to participate in online discussions.

~~~
uncletaco
My solution was just to not use reddit interactively anymore. I used the site
for about 10 years before I got tired of wasting afternoons browsing or
arguing past other users. Stuff I want to discuss usually gets linked in a
discord channel and I talk about it with my friends.

When I browse now I just skim a few subreddits I like and refrain from
interacting.

------
xigency
Just five months ago users were getting _permanently suspended from Reddit_
for mildly criticizing GallowBoob.

You can see it here:
[https://old.reddit.com/r/AgainstKarmaWhores/comments/eb146l/...](https://old.reddit.com/r/AgainstKarmaWhores/comments/eb146l/gallowboob_removed_a_mod_from_rfreecompliments/)

I doubt that he would walk away from the website even though a number of users
would be happier.

There are hundreds of fantastic moderators on Reddit that genuinely help
people and there are also a few people who want to feel powerful by
manipulating others.

~~~
Mirioron
He's probably just going to make a new account.

------
someonehere
There are subs dedicated to calling out his bs. One sub has figured out how he
games reddit in his favor for karma and front page placement.

~~~
commandlinefan
Yeah, I can't think of any one single action that would make Reddit a better
site overall than him leaving it.

------
laurieg
Moderating a medium to large sub is a thankless task.

I moderated a sub with 100,000 subscribers for a couple of years.

Most of the work was removing obviously bad content. There was a user who
would make a new account every few weeks, post various comments to make it
legit, and then start posting legitimate comments with links to hardcore
pornography disguised as normal links. Users once rebelled because I removed
100% illegal content.

Users and mods on the subreddit started to get hit with SLAPP lawsuits at one
point. I was always very careful to hide my real identity but that was the
final straw. I stepped down from modding shortly after.

Modding is a near impossible task and as a subreddit gets bigger it gets
exponentially harder.

------
ranger207
I think the biggest problem with reddit is that the simplest subreddit name is
going to attract the largest audience, and if you don't like the moderators or
community there, then there's nothing you can do about it. There's only one
/r/politics, and if you don't like it then you'll have to move to, say,
/r/notpolitics, which is going to have less visibility and a smaller community
simply because of its name. What would help would be, for lack of a better
term, "namespaced" subreddits. There wouldn't be a /r/politics, there'd be a
/r/namespace1/politics and a /r/namespace2/politics, and there'd effectively
be no problem with visibility: if someone's looking for a subreddit to discuss
politics, then there isn't a default, and you'll have to explicitly choose
which community and moderation style you want. The best way to implement this
would be a federated reddit, with each server being it's own namespace. If you
don't like federated-reddit1.com/r/politics, then move to federated-
reddit2.com/r/politics. There'd be a problem with bubbles, but that wouldn't
be any worse than what already exists.

------
md224
It seems to me like the main purpose of moderation is to make sure posts
conform to the theme of the subreddit... to keep things on topic. Almost
everything else can be taken care of by the downvotes of the community
members.

A subreddit is like a community where every citizen has a gun. They can police
themselves by downvoting each other... the only thing mods need to do is make
sure the theme of the community stays on track.

I'm the sole mod of a subreddit with over 600k subscribers and I basically do
nothing. My case is admittedly special because the subreddit is a weird kind
of "game" with very specific, well-defined rules about how to reply to posts
(and a bot that deletes replies that violate this rule), but in general I feel
like people don't have enough faith in the ability of a community to handle
itself. Occasionally I've had to ban people who are spamming /new with
disturbing content, and I did end up setting some useful automoderator rules,
but otherwise I find that the community runs itself.

I've gotten a few messages from people over the years saying they're
unsubscribing because they wanted me to take a more involved role in
moderating the content posted to the subreddit, removing posts they thought
were "low quality". That's fair, but I don't think it should be up to me what
counts as "low quality"... I'm just one person. The beauty of a community is
watching it develop organically from the actions of thousands of people, not
molding it into some shape you happen to prefer. It's like an organism, and it
has a mechanism to achieve homeostasis: upvotes and downvotes.

~~~
xigency
AskOuija? I appreciate your take on moderation. I think what happened on
WorldPolitics with IAmanAnonymousCoward shows that at least a small bit of
work is needed to keep things on topic, but overall I think free speech and
self-moderation is better.

What seems unacceptable for moderators to do, which seems to happen a lot, is
banning users from multiple subreddits due to comments or behavior in a
different subreddit. That's really a power trip and it sounds like something
that a lot of moderators on 'the list' have done.

------
chomp
Vaguely reminiscent of MrBabyMan and Digg.

------
Eagleflight
I was outraged when I first saw that list and how a few mods control
everything, but this totally sheds some new light on the situation. The
internet can be really shitty sometimes.

------
tripzilch
I'm sorry but I don't know what to make of this. Of course harassment is
terrible, but what the hell is going on?

Last week a reddit thread discussing this list was linked on HN, someone
linked to a site where you could see deleted comments. There were a _lot_. But
it was mainly people asking very reasonable questions and wondering out loud
whether these "power mods" got paid, perhaps by advertisers or influencer
agencies, because doing this kind of moderation is clearly way more than a
full time job. Other deleted comments were wondering if those accounts were
perhaps shared (again super sensible question given the amount of time it
would cost). At the very worst some of the deletions devolved into wild
speculations (as reddit is wont to).

Point is, obviously they _do_ get protection from the site. And apparently
sometimes unreasonably so.

Some stinky stuff is going on below the surface, is my feeling. Doesn't mean
that person gets to be harassed, of course.

Also, I don't really buy the mental health comparison to FB moderators. The
latter is an absolute shit job, and it's done by anonymous _teams_ of _paid_
people. That doesn't really rhyme with being the most upvoted Reddit celebrity
of all time, with their seemingly superhuman sense to post the juiciest meme
at the most opportune time.

------
organicfigs
There is definitely an anomalous uptick with reddit harassment these days. I
posted a positive article to /r/Coronavirus and I was immediately harassed in
the dumbest way possible (someone trying to counter an article I posted but
their argument was actually restating the article thesis). He ended up getting
a ton of traction because he probably sounded confident. It left me confused
and saddened- I owe a lot of what I learned in the last few years through
great discussions on reddit and hn, hopefully reddit's deterioration by
bored/malicious actors is stopped.

~~~
ApolloFortyNine
Well the coronavirus really does bring out the worse part of Reddit. If your
article at all suggested that cases are decreasing/it's not going to lead to
the end of the world, that sub is going to attack you.

------
Causality1
"Five people moderate the 92 largest subreddits."

If that's true, why? How could an individual possibly have enough time and
attention to moderate more than one subreddit with millions of users?

~~~
crankylinuxuser
NodeRed or Apache NiFi can help a great deal with that.

Both are great at posting and reposting (on and off Reddit, or between FB,
Reddit, Twitter, etc), along with controlling botfarms.

edit: Seriously, why the downvotes? We had a NiFi post a week ago. And those
of us who do OSINT and investigative work also use deanonymizing techniques.
We automate our defenses as well using similar.

~~~
Causality1
Probably because it kind of ignored my point. For example, r/pics has thirty-
six moderators. Some of them are undoubtedly inactive, but it's still obvious
that moderating a single massive subreddit is an order of magnitude more work
than can be done by one person and therefore giving one person moderator
rights over multiple does not increase the amount or quality of moderation.
One person cannot use that power to do more good for the site, so the question
is what are they using that power for and why do they deserve it?

~~~
crankylinuxuser
I sait on another comment on this article that being a mod allows you to
strongly astroturf and control the narrative. From there, and having loads of
bots, allows you to manufacture consent or dissent. And the moderation power
allows you to remove what you wish not to address.

It's sheer power. It's not about the money, per se... But those with power get
money, and those with money seek power.

It has nothing to do with good, in most cases.

(And yes, I'm a moderator of small groups. I just remove spam and malware.)

------
s_dev
Big/default subs are fast becoming outright mainstream trash on reddit.
Fortunately like small businesses in the economy the smaller subs are holding
the whole show together.

This is a positive change -- that one user account had too much power over too
many subs. I refuse to believe money wasn't becoming involved.

Size breeds skepticism and the GallowBoob account (whomever was using it) just
got too big.

------
LoSboccacc
GallowBoob is a scourge, I'm sad to see a human being harassed and I hope
he'll see justice, but he's also all it's wrong with reddit moderation and two
wrongs don't cancel out to make one a saint.

I encourage you to dig into the threads of the alleged post that made him
'flip'
[https://www.reddit.com/r/therewasanattempt/comments/gk0w4c/t...](https://www.reddit.com/r/therewasanattempt/comments/gk0w4c/to_have_independently_moderated_subreddits/)

some are straight up harassment, which is sad. some describe however all the
many things he did to ruin other people enjoyment to the site, most common of
which was banning users to steal good content and repost it for karma, to fuel
his own agenda, which include for example being paid from netflix to run
advertisements as normal posts trough the subs he mods.

he's not the good, loving moderator that the article describes.

------
raverbashing
The way I see it is someone who has enjoyed a "privileged" position without
transparency or accountability for a long time is surprised that people find
issues with concentration of moderation powers (especially across subreddits).

Makes me wonder what is it that people find so appealing in having moderation
of subreddits as an almost full time job.

~~~
karaterobot
Concentration of influence in the media is a real issue, yes. However, doxing
him isn't a reasonable or helpful response to those concerns.

~~~
raverbashing
Completely agree.

And while there are advantages to those positions being "anonymous" the impact
of an eventual doxxing is heightened by it.

Maybe an initial greater transparency would have been better in the long run.
Or something like rotation of positions, etc.

------
mellosouls
The issue he was "outed" over (concerning alleged control of a significant
portion of reddit by a small number of users) was discussed here previously:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23173018](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23173018)

------
mirimir
GallowBoob tells a sad story, but the fact remains that they and a few others
had far too much power. They were arguably also spread far too thin. So
altogether, I'm not sad to see them go.

Also, their behavior deleting posts and banning users over discussion of this
issue has been egregious.

------
pphysch
Is he done "after being outed", or done after finding a comfy job in social
media management?

------
dionian
The 'spam filter' enabled on most large subreddits greatly adds to the 'echo
chamber' nature of Reddit and leads to a tyrannical majority. If you get
downvotes in a major sub due to not agreeing with the prevailing opinion, you
are rate-limited and you can only post once every 10 minutes.

Imagine being in a debate with dozens of people and being rate-limited to only
posting every 10 minutes because your opinion wasn't agreed to by people doing
voting.

------
thepangolino
Thank god he left. He’s a pathetic excuse for a human being.

That being said, a great number of the active mods on that platform seems to
be a couple steps away from becoming power tripping maniacs. It’s one thing to
stop spam and illegal content. It’s another to censor discussions because
whatever content was posted can be interpreted as against rule 4.1B §2. How
hard is it to leave the content up and let users downvote it if it’s not so
relevant?

------
anewdirection
This is your signal to build the thing you were thinking about.

So much money on the table for anyone that can reinvent, but allow easy
migration from that once great site.

~~~
downerending
If someone's going after this, my killer feature would be user-driven
moderation/filtering. That is, what I see should be determined by _me_ , not
some moderator or the hivemind. Almost certainly this would need an AI element
to learn what I want to see. Potentially there could be a "people like you"
assist to that.

------
subpixel
Jim Leff, who founded and ran Chowhound long ago, has a lot to say about the
perils of moderating an online community:

[https://jimleff.blogspot.com/2008/08/always-talk-to-
mask.htm...](https://jimleff.blogspot.com/2008/08/always-talk-to-mask.html)

------
tartrate
I'm sure there's an article in there somewhere:
[https://i.imgur.com/GqQCnVG.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/GqQCnVG.jpg)

For some reason it even crashed my mobile browser.

As I was scrolling, more ads loaded and kept moving the text around.

------
stevebmark
I feel sad seeing this gaining traction, when Reddit's appalling history of
enabling and supporting abuse has gone unchecked for so long. Why care about
it now? You didn't care before. This is a real question. Why is now the time
you choose to engage?

------
ciguy
I was once banned from a travel sub for suggesting to a 19 year old woman
asking about safety in Egypt that it might not be the best place to travel by
herself. I had been there myself and know women who have traveled Egypt on
their own who also recommended against it.

My comment was seized upon by mods of the sub as:

1: Mansplaining (She didn't specifically ask for male opinions so I should
shut up).

2: Racist Hate Speech (Because saying Egypt might not be perfectly safe -
something I would also say about many cities in the USA - is somehow racist to
Egyptians).

3: Sexist (Women can do anything that men can do and I was apparently
suggesting otherwise).

I was summarily banned from that sub plus a bunch of other travel subs by the
same few mods. I don't know what the answer is for moderation on Reddit but
whatever they are doing right now is definitely not working.

------
uoaei
Moderation is akin to public service. Taking on the duty means putting
yourself in a place of visibility and accountability. It is no surprise that
the pressure is too much for some.

------
Grue3
The worst spammer on reddit leaves the site? Good riddance. Though I'm sure he
has a few spare accounts to post his stuff.

------
wnevets
Oh good. Blocking him made reddit much more enjoyable.

------
tinus_hn
Oddly enough there is nothing to be seen about this on the reddit frontpage.

------
diebeforei485
Good riddance, IMO

------
ideals
The user in question is GallowBoob.

~~~
Supermancho
He earned so many imaginary points on a platform, that other people target his
status and content. It's not like he couldn't make new accounts. But hey, it's
the platform's responsibility to support him for the content he posts and the
moderation he performs? I cannot have sympathy for his own reindeer games.

------
hi41
Can someone please explain how doxing works at a technical level? Suppose I
post something on Twitter or Youtube that someone does not like how would they
dox me? For example, CNN outed a guy who did a video where Trump bashes a guy
superimposed with CNN in a boxing ring. Wouldn't such attempts at doxing
people also put pressure on their freedom of speech and expression?

~~~
markstos
It doesn't have to be that technical. People search for references that
connect your username with a real name and possibly a location. If there is
only one person with your name in your town, then your home address and likely
phone number can be derived from there. No hacking skills required there, just
researching.

If you send the target a link and they click on it and you control the server,
you can find the IP address use to click on it and aren't using a VPN.

Home IP addresses don't change often, so with the IP address you have another
bit of information that can searched on. This might lead to a second username
associated with the IP address.

Sometimes simply paying attention to the content they post reveals a lot.

Once on a Reddit someone posted a "Guess what state this photo is from" post.
It could have been from many places, but I checked out his profile and all of
his posts from the same place in Pennsylvania, so I guessed that. He seemed
amazed that anyone guessed so fast, but also unaware how the other content he
posted made it very easy to fill in the blank.

Also, many people aren't trying that hard to hide, because they don't expect
that anyone to put any effort into "outting" them.

~~~
ceejayoz
> Also, many people aren't trying that hard to hide, because they don't expect
> that anyone to put any effort into "outting" them.

On top of that, people who are trying to hide _now_ may have a decade or two
of _not_ trying to hide in their Internet history.

------
mycall
> because I don’t know if they’re trying, you know, [to] get my IP.

Use a VPN, double-hop if you really care.

------
sacks2k
Many people see this as moderators controlling too much, but it's what happens
in a mostly free system. Some people will over-achieve and 99% will
underachieve or achieve just enough to get by.

This has been seen time and time again in any system involving humans.

A big issue with Reddit is that it has subs dedicated to encouraging mentally
ill and anti-social behavior.

These things tend to eventually escalate into the real-world where someone
eventually gets hurt or killed.

~~~
dkn775
Can you provide some examples of subreddits that encourage such anti-
social/mentally ill behavior?

