
Deleting the golang subreddit - sacado2
https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/golang-nuts/XoOhzUClDPs
======
BoorishBears
This is asinine and it going through would seriously harm how mature I assumed
the community around Golang was (actually reading through those posts already
did, but either way I guess I'm just one person right?).

The CEO edited a comment and admitted he edited it, and it was stupid, and he
shouldn't have done it.

I'm 100% sure there is a way for _someone_ at any given platform they'd choose
to replace it with to access a DB of posts and edit it without triggering any
sort of edit marker.

I'm also sure if that process exists a CEO is someone who could probably make
it happen, and in fact in some (most?) places someone lower in the chain of
command can probably make it happen.

Spez's actions harm himself more than users of the site. By confirming what
any technically minded person probably already knew (you can edit raw data
backing something like a post), he gave the masses a new source of drama any
time something they don't like appears on the site.

The sensible amongst us should be above childish drama like this.

What is there on /r/Golang that they expect to see edited?

If their qualm is political instead of practical then the users themselves
should leave Reddit, and not burn down the entire village on their way out.

~~~
marcoperaza
I have no opinion whatsoever in this controversy about the golang sub. But I'd
like to call out something in particular about the point you're making:

I see this kind of reductionism to what's "technically possible" a lot around
here in regards to security and user trust. Let's go back to meatspace to get
a more balanced perspective perhaps. Your mailman _can_ read your mail and
steal your packages. Your bank _can_ steal your money. Your waiter _can_
poison you. Your car mechanic _can_ overcharge you.

It's not about what's "technically possible" (though a solution to make it
technically impossible would be useful). It's about TRUST in another human
being who is in a position of power. Trust is built by having a long record of
good behavior and can be destroyed by a single bad action.

~~~
sheepmullet
> Your mailman can read your mail and steal your packages

Exactly.

If my mailman edited one of my letters he would be instantly fired and
hopefully prosecuted.

------
bradfitz
I was the one who proposed deleting /r/golang. It is not some official Go or
Google position.

As much as I used to love Reddit and was addicted to it, my personal position
is that Reddit is no longer a trustworthy platform (if it ever was).

Editing user content is beyond offensive. I never even considered such a thing
in my years of running LiveJournal. That is a major violation of user trust
and trust in the platform.

If Github or Gerrit or Google Groups or Google's SMTP servers were modifying
our code or mailing list content, we would ditch them in a heartbeat.

We shouldn't demand less from Reddit.

But because I learned that /r/golang existed 7 years ago (before I or other
Googlers were even involved with it), I no longer propose deleting it. But I
think the Go project should disassociate from it and give it back to the
community as an unofficial space, as it used to be.

It's just too unreliable of a platform to be official in any regard.

Now I'm brainstorming how one might build a federated Reddit with public,
signed mutation log, ala CT or other chains. And then multiple UIs could
render the same public & federated data set.

~~~
johnnydoebk
I'd make the subreddit unofficial, too but for other reasons. It is a very
unwelcoming place. I'm not the first one who's saying this, but it's really a
shame how toxic the /r/golang is.

~~~
m3talsmith
In order to keep this from being swept under the rug, I can say that I highly
empathize with you. I will also say that this issue has improved greatly. When
I used to hang out in #gonuts it used to be worse.

I blame this on the egos and the expectations of early adopters and
contributors. They came from a point of senior systems programmers. As the
language grew in popularity, they were unprepared psychologically for dealing
with new or junior programmers: the level of questions put forth were things
the original crew had learned early in their careers and took for granted.

It is often this way in early languages. We need to always make room for those
who are just learning, or are not experienced as those who initially created
the language or space. I have seen this improving in the Golang community. The
more new people come in, the more it will improve.

~~~
IndianAstronaut
>As the language grew in popularity, they were unprepared psychologically for
dealing with new or junior programmers: the level of question..

This is so ironic. Go gained popularity fast the same way Python did, because
it is easy to use and a relatively simple language.

------
heroprotagonist
So.. here's the thing. I think that spez did everyone a favor by editing those
user comments.

We know that politicians and corporations game the system already with fake
accounts, presumably as a tool for manipulating public opinion. We know from
the code that user comments aren't encrypted at all, or their voting tallies.
It would require a very small tweak to manipulate things from the server side.

Given that, users should _not_ have been placing any trust in the sanctity of
the results they see to tell them how the hive actually thinks or even if the
linked source is accurate. People need to learn to question the motives of
what's presented to them. I'm not saying to automatically distrust everything,
just to look past whatever spin is put on an article and look at the primary
sources.

The fact that someone has the capability and willingness to edit comments was
so shocking to some people is a sign that these surprised people needed this
kind of a wake-up call.

We can speculate, due to the missing warrant canary, that the government has,
or has had, at least one user under surveillance from the system. This is very
public proof that even the content of comments can be manipulated, which might
help some poor schmuck out one day when his 'anonymous' internet comment gets
misconstrued and comes back to bite him.

~~~
rocketpastsix
Not to mention, its pretty widely known that /r/the_donald uses bots to up the
votes and push their stuff higher on /r/all. Not that Im thrilled that Spez
did what he did, but /r/the_donald has been pushing the line ever since it was
created.

~~~
water42
Do you have any proof of this? I haven't heard this before and they certainly
have an active enough community to push things to the r/all quickly.

~~~
problems
Trump supporters turned out to be 47% of voters and it's been said many times
he had a strong base of energized young people. It's entirely possible it's
fully legitimate in my mind at least.

~~~
eridius
From what I've read, Trump didn't actually get any more votes than republicans
in the past few presidential races, it's just the democratic turnout was a lot
lower than expected, i.e. fewer people overall voted (or more voted for the
third-parties).

------
mrweasel
I get their point, but I also think that a large part of the reason that
people are using the Golang subreddit is Google Groups.

If the Go team could just abandon Google Groups as the main forum for
discussing Go, then just maybe there wouldn't be a need for the subreddit. I
know that some people like Google Groups, but there's at least an equally
large group that absolutely hate it. Personally I find it to be such an awful
platform that I would prefer pretty much anything else, that includes tolerate
shitty behaviour from the Reddit CEO.

~~~
vostok
I'm not too up to date on this. What is your preferred alternative to Google
Groups? Mailman?

~~~
mrweasel
NNTP, phpbb, anything else. Google Groups literally have the worst interface
of any product that I've used in the last 6 - 8 years.

But yes, an old fashion mailing list, archived on marc.info, would be a huge
step up.

I can only assume that Google Groups is some sort of half baked example to
show that GWT works.

~~~
CalChris
Try Yahoo Groups and you'll crawl back to Google Groups on your knees.

------
Steeeve
> That is so beyond unethical and immature, I no longer want anything to do
> with that site. I will be deleting my account on Reddit after backing up my
> content, and I will no longer be a moderator of /r/golang.

Responding to immaturity with immaturity is a bad idea altogether.

I have never understood Google's choice of "use google groups" for projects,
then farming out community relations to third parties like StackOverflow,
Reddit, etc. They have enough resources to manage their own support, news
dissemination, and discussion mechanisms.

There are a number of reasons to not have an official presence on Reddit, but
"I'm taking my ball and going home" isn't one of them.

~~~
forgottenpass
_Responding to immaturity with immaturity is a bad idea altogether._

Sticking to principles, even when it's uncomfortable and inconvenient to do so
is "immature" now?

~~~
freehunter
It's not the principles, it's the actions being discussed to follow through
with those.

You know the phrase "I'm taking my ball and going home"? What he wants to do
is take _someone else 's ball_, go home, and make sure that no one else is
playing with a ball again after he leaves.

He's wanting to destroy something the community finds useful, and not only
that, wanting to prevent the community from building and using it on their own
in the future if they wanted to continue without his involvement. _That 's_
the harmful action. It's fine if he says "I won't use reddit anymore".
Perfectly fine. But shutting down the subreddit, deleting all of its content,
and specifically reserving the name so the community can't continue in his
absence is just... well, immature. There are better ways to handle it. This is
a pure temper tantrum.

------
yxhuvud
While the behaviour of the Reddit CEO was more than a little bit immature and
short-sighted, closing down a functioning community in response seems almost
as stupid. If they try to shut it down, then the community at Reddit will
create a version of it that is not closed down.

~~~
justin_vanw
I'm not a /r/golang user, but I think this is a political statement of 'we
will not tolerate the abuse of users by people entrusted with their data',
which I think is fair.

Maybe they should just call for the CEO to leave or something.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Except this is the admins making the statement, potentially taking their ball
and going home - leaving a lot of people on the court wondering what to do
next.

~~~
justin_vanw
I wonder how dramatic this really is? There must be a hundred forums to
discuss go, people aren't so helpless they can't find their way off of reddit.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Dramatic enough for frequent visitors. Forums are dime a dozen, but a
community you get used to and grow to like is unique for you. If HN was to be
suddenly shut down, I'd literally be heartbroken.

~~~
justin_vanw
I mean, if everyone preferred to leave anyway, then it would be an empty
gesture to shut it down.

~~~
freehunter
If everyone preferred to leave, this would be a non-issue. The problem is, the
only people who seem to be in favor of leaving are the people who aren't using
it in the first place. On Google Groups, everyone is in favor of shutting it
down. On Reddit, everyone is begging for it to be left up.

------
zapu
There is a thread on golang subreddit about this. Users are not happy.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/golang/comments/5eqs64/proposal_to_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/golang/comments/5eqs64/proposal_to_delete_rgolang/)

From what I understand, the golang team does not want any association with the
subredit or reddit as a whole. But I don't understand how /u/spez actions have
triggered this. It looks like the proposal of /r/golang deletion is either a
political statement, or go team wanted to get rid of it before and were just
looking for an excuse.

Everything at expense of /r/golang (and therefore the go language itself)
users.

~~~
Klathmon
They have been vocal in the past about disliking the subreddit, I think this
is just their opportunity.

Edit: disregard this. I remember reading some things a while ago and haven't
looked into it, and I shouldn't have jumped in without doing some due
diligence.

~~~
bradfitz
They? I've never seen the other moderators or myself disliking Reddit before.

This is my opinion alone.

~~~
Klathmon
To be completely honest it was a while ago and I don't remember who or what
was said at this point.

I edited my original comment, I shouldn't have said anything without actually
knowing what I was talking about.

------
detaro
Wow, the amount of people just going "yeah, delete it and make sure it doesn't
come back" is staggering. Really bad image how some people seem to think the
community and it's resources should be "officially owned".

Want to make a personal statement? Leave the platform, demand the subreddit
being marked as unofficial (AFAIK it did start out as a random sub by a random
person and only later added people from the Go team as moderators). Don't
decide for your users that yes, you don't want to meet there anymore, so we
torched it for you.

------
wofo
Note that the discussion on the golang subreddit [1] has a very different
tone. One comment that particularly drew my attention is:

> So people that rarely use this subreddit want to get rid of it? Okay.

It seems like the Google Groups people are not the same as the r/golang
people.

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/golang/comments/5eqs64/proposal_to_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/golang/comments/5eqs64/proposal_to_delete_rgolang/)

------
AlexeyBrin
Closing a thriving community just because an admin feels some moral imperative
to do it is just short sided.

If you don't like Reddit, write a blog post, blow some steam, delete your
Reddit account, be as critical as you wish, but don't kill a community just
because you can.

~~~
mibbiting
I feel like some people don't understand the gravity of what he did. He
_edited_ someone elses comments. What is the point in being part of a
community where the website owners may be editing random comments? It
undermines the whole thing.

Let me ask a question. If it turned out that Google had started selectively
"editing" peoples email coming from Gmail, would you still be fine using
Gmail?

~~~
toomuchtodo
There is no gravity. People are overreacting, that's all. Spez simply did what
other sites are able to do but never admit if they do or not.

GPG sign everything online if you're concerned about your data changing. Even
HN could change your comments if they wanted. What's stopping people? "Trust"?

~~~
ClassyJacket
So what if other websites "could"? It only matters if they DO.

I don't treat everyone like a psychopath because they COULD stab me. I only
care if they do.

~~~
toomuchtodo
You don't know if other sites do it unless they admit it.

------
thewhitetulip
As I have stated elsewhere, the Go community is split into two factions,
elites (Googlers) and others. Reddit is the only place where others and elites
are treated the same, post for feedback on the google group, which has sucky
UI and is terrible to use, and you get small comments because they are busy
and the feedback isn't at all helpful. Contrast that with Reddit, as someone
had pointed to me on HN, I posted a question about AJAX and Go, I got two
answers, one in vanilla JS and one in JQuery. Had I asked that in the google
groups, I'd likely have not been able to post because it would have been "too
simple" or I'd have been shooed away to some obscure stack overflow link. The
community wants the subreddit, you can leave if you want. Just because one
person screwed up doesn't mean that someone who rarely uses reddit wants to
delete the subreddit WITHOUT asking the community. This is against the point
of open source. Isn't Go open source?

------
dingdingdang
This response seems knee jerk to me - the actions of Reddit's CEO were made
public and the backlash was considerable. As long as we're not running on
fully distributed communication services the idea of fully impartial site
owners remain hypothetical. I mean: the complaint itself had to be
posted/linked on a Google service, another company that I guess should be
shunned for being embroiled in various unrighteous actions. Not feasible or
reasonable in my opinion.

------
buro9
This is about trust.

If a space where a community gathers isn't trusted, core members of that
community are going to want to leave.

Trust is delicate. Trust is giving someone the power to do harm you or to
misuse what you have given them, in the belief that they will not do those
things.

The trust has been shattered, and probably only the core members currently
realise this. Those are the users for whom "this is our voice, this is what
we've said" is important.

It is really sad that the trust has been broken, but there you have it. If key
people in _any_ community believe that their words (which are their
reputation) can (will) be edited, misrepresented... then there really is a
problem.

The worst-case logical conclusions are legal liability, the best case is
stress and friction caused by confusions and mis-truths.

I run forums, I know this is about trust, I've seen it played out.

When I designed the forum software for the sites I run I made the database an
append-on-write system to store historical revisions of every comment. I can't
display those (if a user edited something to remove something that had
legal/personal implications then they should not be public) but I do store
them and provide no moderator any access to edit them.

Trust is really important. This isn't, as others suggest, petty.

~~~
Tinyyy
Look, you can ramble all about your 'trust'. But the fact is that the
community on Reddit still trust Reddit. They're not asking to shut down the
subreddit. It's the moderators in power, who use google groups instead of
Reddit, who want to shut the subreddit down.

~~~
cnnsucks
Ironically you're both in agreement without knowing it. Yes, trust is
important and yes, the 'community on Reddit' still trust Reddit.

The bulk of Reddit users don't mind that spez had a momentary lapse of
judgement and corrupted some r/The_Donald stuff. They find it amusing; left to
them r/The_Donald would have been nuked long ago on the way to making Reddit
into the sort of safe space echo chamber they want. The fact that spez had a
little fun with it just affirms that he's on the right side of that mentality
and secures his trust among these people. They're not proud that one of theirs
has been caught so embarrassingly, but he's on their side so it's easy to
forgive.

------
atroyn
This reaction seems a little overwrought, but then again the frequency of this
kind of drama generated by reddit really seems to be pathological.

What is it about a critical mass of people in one place on the web that causes
these kinds of behaviors?

~~~
Sphax
It's Brad and a couple of others who are to blame here, the golang subreddit
didn't do shit to deserve being killed.

------
pavel_lishin
> _It 's a wretched hive of scum and villainy. The Go subreddit was the only
> thing similar to human and it is downright painful most of the time._

How lucky that their group happens to be the good one!

~~~
JamesMcMinn
The person who made this comment in the mailing list appears to have been made
a moderator of subreddit 9 days ago...

------
Tharkun
Their motivation for leaving Reddit is incredibly silly. Especially given that
Google Groups -- of all things -- is their preferred alternative.

~~~
bradfitz
I was the one who proposed deleting /r/golang.

Google Groups is not my preferred alternative by any means. Google Groups is a
1990's webmail interface to crappy but federated SMTP.

There is very little to like about it, but at least the underlying protocol
(SMTP) is federated.

It is NOT an alternative to Reddit, which has a nice UI & voting system.

It's unfortunate that Reddit is not a reliable platform which can be trusted.

If Github were modifying our code for their own amusement we wouldn't trust
them for a platform either.

~~~
Filligree
You're overreacting.

The CEO of reddit edited a few posts, after having been sent masses of hate
mail, then backed it out and apologized. You cannot seriously think there's
any chance he'd do the same to /r/golang; there's little chance he'll do it
again at all.

~~~
czinck
> You're overreacting.

While I agree deleting the subreddit is excessive, I think you're downplaying
it. Reddit has increasingly censored more and more content that the admins
disagreed with (rightly or wrongly). Now they've taken it a step further and
started to modify content they disagree with. If this was early on in reddit's
history and they made the modifications as a joke then it wouldn't be a big
deal, but the CEO modifying posts seen by probably 10s of thousands of people
(that subreddit has 300k very active subscribers) is a huge slip down the
slippery slope. I mean, think what your reaction would be if I misquoted you
at the top, and I'm just a random user quoting you, not an admin actually
changing what you said.

------
fortytw2
As I've said before, there are more than enough willing community members to
moderate the subreddit in the absence of the Go team. No reason for it to have
been brought up like this, instead of a simple "I don't like reddit anymore,
so I'm deleting my account and here's why"

------
kazinator
The CEO edited comments _critical of him_.

Did that happen in the golang subreddit?

If so, those comments should in fact be deleted entirely. Criticizing the CEO
of Reddit is not topical in a golang subreddit; it is off-topic trolling.

~~~
wvenable
I think even saying the comments were _critical_ gives them too much credit.
He edited comments that were harassment to, childishly, redirect them to other
people. But this is small potatoes really.

Reddit has multiple faces; if you're in your technology subreddit you exist in
another world from all the literally crazy drama and harassment that goes on.
Running reddit is not likely to be a pleasant experience anymore.

------
onetwotree
This seems like an extremely silly move.

Reddit can broadly be partitioned into a small number of very popular "front
page" subs, such as /r/TIL, /r/AskReddit, and /r/news, where drama and
toxicity abound, and a vast number of topical subs (such as /r/golang), where
discussion is focused on a specific topic, and generally friendly, civil, and
useful.

I'm not a fan of the front page myself, although usually for reasons unrelated
to the recent drama. But with a nicely curated set of subreddit subscriptions,
I find the site to be a nice collection of news and discussion that interests
me.

Hopefully the golang community shows some maturity and doesn't throw out the
baby with the bathwater.

------
hota_mazi
I thought it was a joke but I realize they are seriously considering doing
this.

Overreaction much?

People want to talk about Go, regardless of how the Go team feels about
reddit's ethics. I'm not sure what doing this will serve except lead to the
creation of another Go subreddit that's no longer moderated by the Go team.

Really su2rprised and disappointed by bradfitz and team's childish
(over)reaction to this.

------
antirez
Always Overreact!!11one. Seriously I expect a bit more by people that for work
apply logic everyday.

------
tcrews
Weren't they (Golang core team) only recently considering removing golang from
StackOverflow like they own the thing?

It seems like a pattern of trying to enforce the unenforceable.

------
sqeaky
Simple question.

What happens if spez modifies comments you put on Reddit in the ancient past
to make you seem like a Racist, ISIS supporter, Homophobe, or simply puts
threats to various heads of state in your name?

Can you really trust him not do to so? What if one day he decides that golang
is bad because they are badmouthing something that spez really likes?

~~~
LordFrith
Go through the comment histories of frequent posters to /r/The_Donald .

It would be extremely hard to make any of them look 'bad'. They relish being
as... deplorable as possible.

~~~
sqeaky
What about my comments? I am not from that sub, but what if spez decides to do
something to my 5 year old reddit comments just because he doesn't like that I
am criticizing him?

Have you every commented on Reddit? If so, now it could be a threat on the
life of a head of state and the investigation could greatly complicate your
life just because you ticked off spez.

------
bryanlarsen
Dupe with more comments:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13035027](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13035027)

------
centizen
As mentioned by others in the thread, deleting it would just make it possible
for someone to take it over the open it again. Setting the community to
private not only solves the issue, but it allows them to bring it back in its
current state at any time if they wish to in the future.

~~~
Sphax
What issue does it solve exactly? the users want to keep using it, only Brad
and a couple others want to kill it.

~~~
Aldo_MX
The issue of investing time in a language which prefers to push a political
agenda at the expense of alienating their community.

------
nols
Even if they effectively delete /r/golang or close it while retaining control
so others can't use it, the users will just create another one. I doubt it
will have a large impact on the future of golang on Reddit, it will just get
rid of years of discussion and make it slightly more difficult to use. You
don't want to use Reddit? Cool, don't. There are still millions who do want to
use it and some might use that to find information on golang.

------
stcredzero
> I would argue that a moderator shutting down a community of 25,000
> individuals because of their own personal opinions is just as much if not
> the greater abuse of power. (blitzd)

This is emblematic of what's wrong with so many subreddits and so much of the
social web that comes in the form of "forums" \-- it seems like we have entire
generations of users who have associated the totalitarian nature of forums
with things being "advanced" on the internet.

Social media isn't mostly about free thought, free speech, and free inquiry
anymore. Nowadays, it's mostly about the rapid dissemination of conformity.
Woe betide you if you actually have a nuanced opinion that doesn't fit neatly
with either side of an issue. Your fellow posters/commenters will reject their
pattern-match and call you a liar and 5th columnist for the other side.

Technology came and killed the impulse towards freedom. It taught people
through repeated iteration that conformity to the mob was the highest good. It
taught smart people that wrangling their way into positions of centralized
power to exercise authoritarian rule was the insider move. It taught everyone
that suppression of anything that you didn't like was the winning move. It was
called the internet.

------
1_2__3
How about we let the drama stay in the drama subreddits, and in the non-drama
subreddits we act like adults.

For fuck's sake, not everything in life has to be a cause.

------
shanemhansen
This guy should be applauded. Here's why: He made a mistake by making a
childish response to a childish attack and then he admitted fault.

That's so rare. I wish more CEOs had his backbone.

I'm sorry to be inflammatory, but it seems like people take reddit a little
too seriously and this is the real world not /r/relationships. It's probably
not time to: "lawyer up, hit the gym, delete /r/golang".

------
mseepgood
Why pollute HN with reddit drama? Aren't we all glad to have left reddit
behind?

------
phn
Now would be an awesome time for reddit to add support for signed posts and
comments.

------
gaur
The reddit admins allow subreddits that loudly promote white supremacism.
Comment editing is not the most pressing ethical failing of that site.

------
adrenalinelol
Why is the initial reaction to delete the sub instead of find a new owner?

------
j1vms
I know people are talking again about a distributed (blockchain-based?) forum
preventing problems like this, and once that happens it will make "message
forgery" like this a lot harder. But a "low-tech" solution in the mean time
would be for users to post a public-key under their username/account. Then
when they publish a message, they include a private-key encrypted SHA256 hash
of the contents of their post and append that to their message (in effect,
signing it). Other users' client-side tools (say browser plugins) could pick
up the hash, verify the message and indicate the message is authentic. Forging
the public key or an already posted message would raise an alert for automated
tools, other users and/or the poster. Would reduce the need to log all message
contents, just the keys. Of course, does not prevent message deletions but
that is under moderation scope anyway. Just a sketch.

~~~
hackerboos
There's Bitmessage[1] but it needs a lot of work before it could replace
Reddit.

[1] -
[https://bitmessage.org/wiki/Main_Page](https://bitmessage.org/wiki/Main_Page)

------
jarcane
So, reddit actively continues to be a playground for fascists, racists, and
sexists, has a history of hosting borderline child pornography, but what
drives the golanger in question to finally leave is spez had a bit of a temper
tantrum (with some of said fascists I might add) and edited some posts
harassing him?

Some people's values are utterly alien to me.

------
andybak
Here's the thing. I read the whole pizzagate vs reddit thing and decided it
was interesting in the "let me please think about it in a few years time" kind
of way. There's rights and wrong and subtleties but fuck it. I've got more
important things to worry about.

If I was a Go dev now I'd be furious because this bizarre incestuous little
drama suddenly is affecting my actual working day (assuming the golang
subreddit is a viable community).

I recently became active on the Django subreddit because it seemed more
approachable than the main IRC or Google Group. If that suddenly got vanished
because of subreddit drama I'd be fairly annoyed.

Can we just have a separate room for the children to play in?

------
dirtbox
Spez edits comments directed at him in a toxic community that has been pretty
much the root of the alt-right echo chamber for the last year.

I'm just sad he didn't delete the entire sub.

/r/golang can do what they like, but this is no reason.

~~~
cooper12
Leave it to them to make themselves out to be the victims even though constant
username pinging is considered harassment on reddit. (to say nothing of the
content of the comments themselves...) The funny part is that if spez is
deposed, he was likely the last one fighting against their sub's removal. The
same thing happened in the past with Ellen Pao . According to Yishan Wong
(another ex-CEO):

> Ellen had to take over (I'm not sure she wanted to, but she was the only
> one) and the board wanted her to just ban all those subreddits but she had
> been around long enough to know that you can't just do that (they'll just
> spring up again) so she resisted.
> ([https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/58zaho/the_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/58zaho/the_accuracy_of_voat_regarding_reddit_srs_admins/d95a7q2/))

> on at least two separate occasions, the board pressed /u/ekjp to outright
> ban ALL the hate subreddits in a sweeping purge. She resisted, knowing the
> community, claiming it would be a shitshow. Ellen isn't some "evil,
> manipulative, out-of-touch incompetent she-devil" as was often depicted
> ([https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3dautm/conte...](https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3dautm/content_policy_update_ama_thursday_july_16th_1pm/ct3n7hc/))

------
rurban
Aside from the valid point and the little drama involved, the more important
point is that reddit just lost its safe harbor protection over that issue,
which means it will be either closed down soon (too expensive and risky) or
heavily censored with only a few subreddits, which means golang sooner or
later might need to find another place. So better look now.

[https://twitter.com/infinitechan/status/801627024431271936](https://twitter.com/infinitechan/status/801627024431271936)

~~~
SwellJoe
That's nonsense. Safe harbor can apply to some parts of a site even if the
owners of the site exercise editorial control over some of it. Google has both
curated/edited content and user generated content, YouTube has both, facebook
has both, newspaper websites have both, WordPress.com has both.

It is not a switch that gets flipped for the entire website when one editorial
action happens somewhere on a website, and it exhibits total lack of
understanding of the safe harbor provisions to suggest it is.

------
ben_jones
PLEASE don't force me to use google groups more then I have to!

------
hashhar
Well, being a lurker in /r/golang for about 8 months now has shown me that the
official team was always looking for a way to clear out the reddit community.
They have a strict moral police and do some weird shit.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/golang/comments/59nk46/stalking_peo...](https://www.reddit.com/r/golang/comments/59nk46/stalking_people_online_for_thought_crimes_this_is/)

------
saurik
Wiping away a massive trove of contextualized historical discussion and even
technical content, particularly one about a widely used open source project,
is sickening and in my eyes is so much worse than what anyone at reddit did I
am shocked that someone would even propose it much less that other people on
this mailing list were not only willing to consider it but seem to actively
support the idea.

------
plandis
That's fine. I'm not on any mailing lists but I am subscribed to the golang
subreddit. I guess this means I will just not stay up to date with whats going
on.

Edit: [https://www.quora.com/What-are-examples-of-Google-acting-
une...](https://www.quora.com/What-are-examples-of-Google-acting-unethically-
or-illegally)

Perhaps we should close down the google groups too?

------
LordFrith
This is the oddest consequence of the pizzagate thing I could have dreamed of.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/technology/fact-check-
this...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/technology/fact-check-this-
pizzeria-is-not-a-child-trafficking-site.html)

------
u801e
It would be nice if a usenet newsgroup like comp.lang.golang existed and all
posts made to the golang subreddit could be reposted there.

Then, IMO, deleting the golang subreddit would be a non-issue. The newsgroup
doesn't have to be moderated and, if one wants moderation, they can do it via
the newsreader program.

------
sb8244
I don't understand the argument that this is outrageous and there should be
auditing and all of that. How do you know there isn't? How do you know new
policies will come into place that prevent this?

Jumping ship less than a week after it seems crazy to me.

------
bromuro
Classic reddit drama: reacting to a childish action with even more childish
actions.

------
noja
Surely it should be for Google to _suggest_ and the community to _decide_?

------
dekhn
Since the golang community was originally independent, and then the golang
owners took it over, instead of deleting it, they should return it to the
community with a disclaimer it's not an official venue.

------
erikb
I totally understand the reason, but deleting a subreddit just hurts the
community more than it hurts reddit.

Working on an alternative to reddit and then dropping reddit once that one
works may be a solution.

------
jondubois
I think that the CEO of Reddit should step down. I believe that the odds of
him getting caught for this were very small - So that begs the question; how
many times did he pull this off in the past without anyone noticing?

The almost unnoticeable subtlety of the act is what I find most disturbing.
It's not that the act was abominable (it could be worse). It's just that this
position demands higher ethics than that - It needs someone with the right
motivations.

I think people are too easy on CEOs; if a regular employee messes up, they get
fired. Why doesn't this apply to executives?

We should be much tougher on executives... It's not like they'd lose their
house or their family if they got fired.

------
johnnydoebk
I never liked the /r/golang subreddit and its atmosphere. But at the moment
it's the most active golang community that I'm aware of.

------
hhsnopek
Lets just remove left-pad from npm while we're at it again

------
exception_e
E̶l̶l̶e̶n̶ ̶P̶a̶o̶ Spez should step down!

------
zouhair
That is quite an immature thing to do.

------
faragon
Not a problem. They can write their own Reddit in Go, with blackjack, etc.

------
mankash666
Yes. Let's delete our accounts from Google for Google's unfair treatment of
protonmail and yelp in yesteryears. Let's get off Facebook for fake stories
swinging elections. Don't even get me started on Microsoft, just get off it.

Get off everything. Everything sucks

~~~
krick
Sounds funny to me, because I'm avoiding Google, Facebook and Microsoft
products when it isn't way too problematic, and I do it because of
political/moral reasons not in the last place.

I'm not saying I agree with r/golang deletion, by the way. Surely this is
stupid and inadequate, as reddit it made out of drama anyway. But getting off
something you don't agree with in general is quite noble, I'd say.

------
elcct
I think it is time to sign comments, that way these will be tamper proof.

Regarding the subreddit, I would just leave it. It was hard work of the
community to create content that exist there and it will not be nice to remove
it just because of some immature CEO.

But once suitable alternative comes to the light, would be nice to disallow
further posts and add a redirect to the new community.

------
draw_down
Quite frankly, reddit has way bigger problems than that. I mean, do what you
want with your subreddit, no skin off my back. But it is borderline insane to
me that _this_ is what is turning people against it. Ignominious.

------
jsprogrammer
HN moderators absolutely edit user content without notice or attribution.

My comments are partly authored by dang, but you will not be able to tell
which words are mine and which are not.

~~~
grzm
Can you provide examples? I'd like to know what types of things they edit.

~~~
dang
It's quite untrue.

I can think of a single example where we edited a user's comment without them
asking us to, and it happened a few days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13012176](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13012176).
As you can see, I posted what we did and why. The alternative would have been
to kill the comment outright.

Edit: my conscience reminds me that I've also edited several spelling mistakes
over the years. That was mostly when I was filling in for pg.

~~~
grzm
Given what I've seen of your behavior (and sctb's) on HN, I didn't think my
parent would be able to come up with any. I generally push back against
apparently baseless accusations (which is what I assumed in this case) by
asking for evidence.

~~~
dang
Thank you. That's a good approach to take, because if people do provide
specific links, we can look into what happened and explain it. Grand
accusations about HN moderation are nearly always without specific examples,
which I suppose is a kind of evidence in its own right.

------
jsprogrammer
The CEO of Google was busted by his emails for conspiring to suppress wages.

WikiLeaks recently released a 2014 email[1] from Eric where he appears to
conspire with the Clinton campaign/dnc to have "low paid permanent employees".

[1] [https://wikileaks.org/podesta-
emails/emailid/37262](https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/37262)

E: bots are out?

~~~
sachel1sta
Your text is nearly white within 19 minutes of being posted.

It's obvious HackerNews is not safe--from certain people.

~~~
kps
More likely it's because the comment has nothing to do with editing users'
content — unless it's meant to suggest that someone else faked Eric Schmidt's
email (from the time 5+ years ago when he was CEO of Google) to incriminate
him.

~~~
jsprogrammer
The comment has everything to do with editing content. Schmidt was effectively
convicted on the content of his emails. I don't think Schmidt was able to edit
an email used in that case.

It is a positive example of what the poster I responded to was claiming.

Additionally, this CEO (now of Alphabet) has continued to engage in seemingly
illegal behavior over Google email. I'm not aware of Eric disputing any of
these allegations, even though I have confronted him on them multiple times.

~~~
qb45
Then you should have made it clear what you meant because your post looks like
a completely offtopic rant.

~~~
jsprogrammer
Perhaps you thought that.

Others saw something different.

------
jonlorusso
meh

------
transfire
I fear the collective idiocy of the United States populace is reaching
dangerous levels.

------
jack9
Comments on any given internet forum are of no specific importance or
authority, which is part of the lesson. This "question" is a non-event.
Sheesh.

