-90 upvotes, 29 direct replies (showing 25)
I'm hesitant to delve into this here, but I will drop a quick answer in. There isn't much to say beyond this, so you may take it or leave it.
We did ban a handfuls folks involved in ZQ postings. The content was not an issue with us. The main issue we were seeing is raids being executed by outside parties which were taking part in vote manipulation on the site.
The mods of some subreddits also took their own actions. While I don't personally agree with *some* of the responses, they're generally welcome to moderate as they see fit, and we saw no reason to intervene on their actions. Some other subreddits opted to take no actions.
The suggestion that we were actively trying to censor discussion of these topics does not match the evidence. Yes, some people were banned because they were doing sleezy shit, but reddit was in no way devoid of the discussion. The /r/all page was covered in ZQ links and discussions on a few of these days. If we really had some nefarious plan to silence that discussion then we did a damn horrible job at executing on it :P
Comment by Timmeh7 at 07/09/2014 at 13:02 UTC
67 upvotes, 1 direct replies
The issue here, yet again, is one of transparency and communication. As you've said several times, Reddit is a user-driven platform; the users are the site's resource - you as employees don't supply content for users to consume, users supply it for themselves, and essentially vote to manipulate what other users see, creating a fairly democratic system of content. In an ideal world, such a model would require no administrator intervention, or indeed, administrators, because content is directed by the users. Obviously almost nobody thinks that's realistic, but for any platform which is driven purely by user interaction, executive administrative decisions which impact on users must be weighed carefully because, more than in other models, such decisions risk appearing heavy handed, or worse dubiously motivated when the rationale behind them isn't immediately obvious.
This has happened time and time again. Often rationale is perfectly legitimate, but users (who ultimately ARE the website) have to all but guess what it could be. This absence of transparency is especially bad for a user-driven model; Reddit provides a platform, and gives users the tools to dictate what they wish to see more or less of, and these things should, in theory, do almost all of the work for you. Of course, such a system will never be enough by itself, but when it isn't, and when moderator, or more importantly administrator interaction is required, it must be possible for users to understand the rationale behind decisions, otherwise this stops being a user-driven platform, and ultimately users become disillusioned and stop being users.
What's probably needed is application of a quality procedure to these decisions. At the moment, administrator intervention feels arbitrary; inconsistent. The rationale for large decisions isn't obvious, and usually seems to require a painful period of attempting to draw administrators into passing comment to understand what the hell happened and why. Ask anyone even remotely business savvy whether that's good process and they'll look at you in horror; this isn't how management should run anywhere. If you get down to it, you'll probably find that your users are reasonable people (well, mostly) - actually explain decisions up front, make dissemination a part of the process of taking large-scale administrative action, and I guarantee you'll see a far, far happier userbase when these sorts of decisions are necessary.
To put it bluntly, Reddit is not the most technically brilliant user-driven web platform of the modern day. It isn't the most advanced, or the most intuitive to use. It is still the best, however, and that's entirely because it maintains a preponderance of users compared with competitors. The internet is a fickle thing, though, and we've all seen poor management or failure to adapt result in boycotts or mass migration over the years. I'm sure I don't need to explain the potential consequences of users losing faith in administrative decisions. No matter how legitimate your reasoning for making decisions, without transparency, users will draw their own conclusions, and as this episode demonstrates, it'll almost always be for the worse.
Comment by [deleted] at 07/09/2014 at 16:20 UTC
28 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I find the stance that "vote brigading is evil" to be rather entertaining, as reddit often does exactly that by linking to polls, surveys, youtube videos (to upvote/downvote) etc. But it's fine as long as it's not *on* your site right?
And before this is answered with the typical "well, reddit users can do what they want" I'd point out that the *admins* in the past have effectively encouraged vote brigading congress and the FTC/FCC over internet-related issues (such as SOPA/CISPA). In fact, I believe they're about to do it again this Friday over net neutrality. Imagine how they'd feel if next Friday the FCC says "any comments we receive from users that came from reddit or any other site taking part in the planned protest will be ignored".
Seems kind of hypocritical.
And note, vote brigading != vote manipulation (making fake accounts to vote multiple times). The latter is obviously bad and should be stopped. My guess is that it gets hard to detect manipulation inside of the circumstances that arise when something is being "brigaded", so rather than solve that problem they just banned vote brigading.
Comment by Psycho_Robot at 07/09/2014 at 15:37 UTC
11 upvotes, 1 direct replies
The staff did a poor job communicating that to any of us. What we saw was conversations about a person, who uses her connections to get what she wants, mysteriously vanish even it seemed like there was nothing wrong. We then saw the mods of subreddits taking actions that even you disagree with. We saw people who were obviously not 4chan vote brigaders getting shadowbanned, which we thought were not even supposed to be used on users.
Besides, while the issue of how you define vote manipulation versus activity spike due to cross website linking had already been raised, I would ask, does it even matter? Was it worth it to shut down these conversations so much under the guise that the traffic from 4chan *might* be inorganic? We didn't ask 4chan to be there and we couldn't make them leave, yet because they showed up, and because of the actions taken, and the lack of communication, we legitimately felt that you guys were in in the Quinnspiracy.
Comment by Noltonn at 07/09/2014 at 13:37 UTC
98 upvotes, 1 direct replies
You did a horrible job at what you're claiming you were trying to do. You were doling out shadowbans to people who were *just* upvoting. Not even people linked here from 4chan, just upvoting. I would've understood if you banned all new accounts upvoting, that would've been a decent response, but you didn't.
You also deleted subreddits. And you blamed shadowbans on bots. You guys handles your jobs horribly. It was a show of clear incompetence.
Comment by tomblifter at 07/09/2014 at 12:20 UTC
125 upvotes, 1 direct replies
That's complete bull. Every video posted was deleted on multiple subreddits, and subreddits created specifically for discussion were banned. It wasn't just a "handful" that you shadowbanned either.
Comment by FoolsErrend at 07/09/2014 at 16:52 UTC
14 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Who Watches the Watchers ?
I am angry with Gaming Mods. I do not agree with their heavy handed approach. the #gamergate topic IS VALID AND RIGHT to debate. There is no reason that topics addressing this can/should be deleted/users shadowbanned.
I understand that Mods are responsible for administering the content - but where can WE (non mods) go to complain / raise issues for what appears to be clear abuse of power.
This type of behaviour is going to destroy what makes Reddit great.
NOTE - I do not talk about witchhunts, nor attacks on people - but good honest debate. People with different opinions - strong arguments, humor, memes, etc etc. That is what we want and deserve.
Mods who appear to have a political agenda and project that agenda onto the subreddit is not CONSISTANT with Reddit as a whole.
Comment by kvachon at 07/09/2014 at 12:37 UTC
65 upvotes, 2 direct replies
raids being executed by outside parties which were taking part in vote manipulation on the site
Whats the difference between that, and a huge spike in traffic. The content? The voting?
Comment by DeviousNes at 07/09/2014 at 16:25 UTC
7 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Up voted for visibility. Response appreciated, but awful in context. I don't care at all about whoever Zoe is or what she does with her life. I do care greatly about content manipulation, especially in light of where I'm reading this. Seems to me another line in the sand was drawn, and it smells personal, not legal. The justification you gave does not come close to explaining the events, there are a lot of screenshots proving contrary.
Comment by funderbunk at 07/09/2014 at 19:33 UTC
11 upvotes, 0 direct replies
The suggestion that we were actively trying to censor discussion of these topics does not match the evidence.
What about the new subreddits that were created specifically for discussion that were insta-banned? Your version of events doesn't pass the smell test.
Comment by audacious_hrt at 07/09/2014 at 16:14 UTC
13 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Frankly that was not the only reason so many users were banned? And they were definitely not handful. There is enough evidence on /r/SubredditDrama. Even a mod of /r/gaming was shadow banned. His discussion with 1 of the users was leaked, where he had clearly stated how 1 of the admins had asked them to delete the posts. There are screenshots of the pms in the leak. You really did silence the discussion where it really mattered.
Comment by Brimshae at 07/09/2014 at 20:36 UTC
15 upvotes, 1 direct replies
We did ban a handfuls folks involved in ZQ postings. The content was not an issue with us.
Clearly[1].
1: http://i.imgur.com/5UTd9sT.png
Comment by swimtothemoon1 at 07/09/2014 at 14:56 UTC
39 upvotes, 3 direct replies
That doesn't explain why 23000 comments were deleted and many people shadowbanned for no apparent reason. https://imgur.com/a/f4WDf[1] could you explain this?
Comment by nurdboy42 at 07/09/2014 at 16:35 UTC
6 upvotes, 0 direct replies
That doesn't explain the mass shadowbanning that occurred in this thread on /r/videos[1] for users merely discussing the topic at hand.
1: http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/2ecj3x/quinnspiracy_theory_innout_edition/
Comment by Some-Redditor at 07/09/2014 at 11:15 UTC
23 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Thank you for actually responding. I really don't care about all the ZQ drama, but the way it was handled by mods and admins was incredibly inept. Next time something like that happens, the mods should just say "Here's a new forum for this topic, post there, we'll sticky the link for a week or two." The admins can suggest the mods do this. The shadow bans seemed to be applied unfairly.
On the pic issue, why not just fingerprint & hash copyrighted works and ban all links which contain the work? Not that it can't be worked around, but it might help. For all I know you already do that.
Comment by ExogenBreach at 07/09/2014 at 11:46 UTC*
383 upvotes, 5 direct replies
Google is sort of useless IMO.
Comment by borderlinebadger at 07/09/2014 at 11:19 UTC
152 upvotes, 3 direct replies
why are the same standards never held for srs?
Comment by broden at 07/09/2014 at 13:53 UTC
13 upvotes, 0 direct replies
If we really had some nefarious plan to silence that discussion then we did a damn horrible job at executing on it :P
Ha, yeah.
Comment by Trakel at 07/09/2014 at 13:03 UTC
26 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Comment by [deleted] at 07/09/2014 at 13:18 UTC
10 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Rock bottom, reddit. Need a hand with that shovel?
Comment by lizardpoops at 08/09/2014 at 02:34 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Why was TechRaptor's subreddit deleted?
Why have actions requiring admin-level access been undertaken to suppress discussion of controversy in the gaming and games media industries?
Explain to me why the admins took action on this given the amount of **FAR** more legitimately questionable stuff you can find on your average toodle through the darker corners of reddit that goes untouched.
Comment by totes_meta_bot at 07/09/2014 at 15:28 UTC
7 upvotes, 0 direct replies
This thread has been linked to from elsewhere on reddit.
2: http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fmeta_bot_mailbag
Comment by Onethatobjects at 07/09/2014 at 12:30 UTC
35 upvotes, 0 direct replies
bullllllllll
Comment by DMXWITHABONER at 08/09/2014 at 00:06 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
we did a damn horrible job at executing on it
lol yeah pretty sure everyone agrees with that
Comment by [deleted] at 08/09/2014 at 08:12 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
The main issue we were seeing is raids being executed by outside parties which were taking part in vote manipulation on the site.
Do you just mean people linking to reddit from other sites?
I fail to see why hat would be considered vote manipulation, unless it's explicit in the subtext of the link.. eg. VOTE THIS UP [link]
Comment by [deleted] at 08/09/2014 at 16:22 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I hate that you got down voted for trying to explain this, I'm sure you don't care about DVs anymore considering your position as admin.
I really really really wish that mods could see referral stats. Please be Santa and make it happen.
