These subreddits are huge though, and are defaults. Any default subreddit is going to have a lot more attention drawn to it and will have a lot more interaction between reddit the company and the individual moderators. It's not that reddit runs the subreddit, but I think it's inaccurate to say that they are "unaffiliated."
PCMR had been banned and I was still getting messages and phone calls. Obviously, I wasn't answering my phone, which is why when the police called and the phone number said "Unavailable", I didn't pick up. Then my wife called. I answered and she was asking if I was okay, because she had been called by the police. She gave me the phone number for a detective that was involved and I called him. (Later that night, I learned that my wife had Facebook divorced me so people wouldn't find her, lol) After a lengthy phone call he asked that I come down to the police station. I spent about an hour in an interrogation room, where I learned that not one, not two, but three cities' police departments, a SWAT team and a bomb squad were now evacuating people from the address that was posted on PCMR. A fourth city’s police department was engaged a bit later to visit an even older address they had on record for me.
It's worth noting at this point that the address that was being handed out was wrong. It had been my address once, years ago. It is an apartment complex with roughly a hundred and seventy-five units and just under a hundred people were being evacuated from their homes due to the terroristic threats. Families were rushing their children out, fearing that death would arrive in the form of an explosive fireball.
Had I still been living there, it's not hard to imagine a situation that may have ended in me being shot by a police officer.
All because of photoshopped images of a private conversation.
When I went home that night, I called my wife and told her not to come home but to go stay with her parents. I circled the block around my house and when I went inside, I went straight for the gun safe. I didn't sleep Monday night.
Nope. They have no such responsibility. They take a very hands-off approach to moderation and delegate all moderation to the moderators of the subreddit (unless something is illegal and the mods aren't doing anything, of course). If the users are fed up with the moderation of a subreddit, they can always make an alternate sub and carry on.
but.. but... muh freedum! In all serious, I agree with your sentiment, and I think every time this comes up it gets more and more tired. I suppose it's good that we, as a society, still have people who complain about it so that we never get to the point where their complaint is valid.
I think we're alright. Each time there is an influx (and this was a relatively small one) the prediction is that the floodgates will open. This never materializes. People often do not realize that we've been at this for nearly 3 years now. That said, if the floodgates did open my feed would still have you and the others I follow in it. I take comfort in that.
> The moderators are not affiliated with reddit inc. I doubt Reddit's moderators are doing something that's against Reddit's wishes though, and I doubt there's a meaningful editorial distinction to be made between a "subreddit moderator" and a "Reddit moderator".
This is fucking adorable. It's absolutely disgusting that these people are claiming being "censored". The people complaining here have never been truly censored in their lives, and are greatly cheapening the word. Your speech isn't getting oppressed here. You can't make censorship on a private subreddit with fucking rules. You wanna post the link? Make your own goddamn subreddit with your own rules and post that link 9000 times. Mods own the subreddits, that's always how it's been. God. Damn. It's like the people who claim America is heading towards 1984. Clearly you haven't read that book, because just by being able to compare America to 1984, it makes it obvious that we aren't living in 1984. Edit: Bless whoever made that third tag. Think I'm gonna duck from Hubski till things calm down for a while.
I think it has become a different issue on reddit though as they have defaults. So it is more about caring what the newbies will see and caring that millions of people who only subscribe to the defaults and a few others who might have wanted to read it didn't get to. Sure you can say make your own subreddit and they probably will, but when we are talking about a subreddit with 5 million subscribers it is becoming like censoring a major newspaper.
You don't seem to realize that /r/worldnews and, subsequently, /r/news are already horribly biased, usually racist, and sometimes misoganystic. I like Reddit, a lot. It can be very entertaining and I can learn a lot from it. But I would never, never, never use it as a source for the news that's happening around the world. I get it from reputable places. Plus a big part of joining Reddit is realizing that the defaults are shite, so, you know, maybe this is helping with that
I used to think the same way you did until I realized the HUGE effect reddit has on the thoughts, opinions and overall knowledge of a FUCK TON of people. I used to think: it's a private site with private subreddits and they can run it however they like. Mods for sale? If you don't think this is happening, you're stupid. Jailbait? Fuck yeah. He can do what he wants. In the last couple years, reddit has expanded to be the default news source of a lot of people (not just techy programmer types). Top blogs and news sites get their stories from reddit, rather than reddit posting stories from top blogs / news sites. But even with this expansion, people still believe that reddit is full of the top news stories and stories that no one else covers. Posts like, "This is happening in Ukraine/Venezuela and mass media isn't covering it" demonstrate this. It shows how reddit strives to be different than traditional media and call attention to all stories. But for a large population of people today, reddit is basically traditional media and reddit's stories have the same struggles and flaws: biases, censorship, ignorance, left wing, right wing, echo chamber, etc. The real problem is that redditors believe that reddit has every top story and is breaking the mold of what traditional media outlets provide. This assumption/viewpoint results in a certain blindness / ignorance to any censorship or bias. It's not quite as bad as Fox News enthusiasts, but it's getting close. Because reddit gives the impression that it is covers everything important, people have the potential to be doubly blinded to any censorship that does occur. It wouldn't be an issue if readers knew they weren't getting the full story. And a lot of people (like you) see the racist, biased, misogynistic or 20%-of-the-story posts. But the problem remains for a majority - this is why the post in /r/news was such a shock to a lot of redditors. Whether it is a big conspiracy, whether mods have been bought or not, or whether someone was actively censoring the post in question, I think it is important to remind the masses that reddit doesn't have every side of every story. If people can even open their eyes a little bit, or question a little bit, it's going to be a better situation.
I wish I knew a newspaper I could trust.. The guardian maybe but apart from that I feel a bit lost looking for "reputable sources" these days. I must admit a large part of my news comes from reddit. It's just too damn easy to get it there and get swept up in the hive mind.
The trick is, when you find a particular news report, don't take that as fact. Go through the net and find lots of different reports on the same thing, then make a decision as to how you feel about it. It takes more work, but you become better informed. And give NPR a shot, it's the bee's knees.I feel a bit lost looking for "reputable sources" these days.
There are some good publications, but increasingly it is better to follow certain authors rather than the newspapers/publications themselves. The best individual reporters have much more respect for their craft and their audience than any collection of them on a payroll.I wish I knew a newspaper I could trust..
I've been tuning into Democracy Now! recently, and it's pretty good (though it's not a newspaper, it's a show). It's certainly biased pretty far to the left, but admittedly and unapologetically so. I think bias is only really a problem in journalism when the authors try to hide it.
True. flagamuffin, your best bet is to hide stubborn posts. I'm always open to suggestions, of course.
So imagine something like this: 1) Someone tags this with #reddit. flagamuffin is ignoring #reddit. 2) Someone else changes that tag to #redditsucks. 3) It pops up in flagamuffin's feed again. 4) flagamuffin changes it back to #reddit. 5) someone else changes it to #redditrules. 6) flagamuffin changes it back to #reddit and gripes. Now - if you're tracking all tags, this thing has been tagged #reddit, #redditsucks and #redditrules. If you're tracking all that, flagamuffin should have it ignored the first time it pops up #reddit, despite the fact that someone changed it back. No?
I wonder if it would confuse people even more, -the tag being either in their feed or ignored for an non-obvious reason. Also, flag can just change the community tag once. Everyone gets just one suggestion. So he gripes at #3. We track the tags so it defaults to the most suggested. One possibility is that the behavior is either the current tag, or the one you suggested, if you did suggest one. That might be even more confusing.
I just wondered if anyone has thought about this kind of issue if this site scales to reddit proportions. I really liked that when i arrived I wasn't pointed to some default tags which gets rid of the reddit defaults issue. Also as I understand it there are no mods and also no downvoting. But if say the site does get huge and companies like McDonald's and Taco Bell and the NSA take notice, is there anything fundamental which makes this site harder to add shills/manipulate than reddit.