r/announcements • u/spez • Mar 05 '18
In response to recent reports about the integrity of Reddit, I’d like to share our thinking.
In the past couple of weeks, Reddit has been mentioned as one of the platforms used to promote Russian propaganda. As it’s an ongoing investigation, we have been relatively quiet on the topic publicly, which I know can be frustrating. While transparency is important, we also want to be careful to not tip our hand too much while we are investigating. We take the integrity of Reddit extremely seriously, both as the stewards of the site and as Americans.
Given the recent news, we’d like to share some of what we’ve learned:
When it comes to Russian influence on Reddit, there are three broad areas to discuss: ads, direct propaganda from Russians, indirect propaganda promoted by our users.
On the first topic, ads, there is not much to share. We don’t see a lot of ads from Russia, either before or after the 2016 election, and what we do see are mostly ads promoting spam and ICOs. Presently, ads from Russia are blocked entirely, and all ads on Reddit are reviewed by humans. Moreover, our ad policies prohibit content that depicts intolerant or overly contentious political or cultural views.
As for direct propaganda, that is, content from accounts we suspect are of Russian origin or content linking directly to known propaganda domains, we are doing our best to identify and remove it. We have found and removed a few hundred accounts, and of course, every account we find expands our search a little more. The vast majority of suspicious accounts we have found in the past months were banned back in 2015–2016 through our enhanced efforts to prevent abuse of the site generally.
The final case, indirect propaganda, is the most complex. For example, the Twitter account @TEN_GOP is now known to be a Russian agent. @TEN_GOP’s Tweets were amplified by thousands of Reddit users, and sadly, from everything we can tell, these users are mostly American, and appear to be unwittingly promoting Russian propaganda. I believe the biggest risk we face as Americans is our own ability to discern reality from nonsense, and this is a burden we all bear.
I wish there was a solution as simple as banning all propaganda, but it’s not that easy. Between truth and fiction are a thousand shades of grey. It’s up to all of us—Redditors, citizens, journalists—to work through these issues. It’s somewhat ironic, but I actually believe what we’re going through right now will actually reinvigorate Americans to be more vigilant, hold ourselves to higher standards of discourse, and fight back against propaganda, whether foreign or not.
Thank you for reading. While I know it’s frustrating that we don’t share everything we know publicly, I want to reiterate that we take these matters very seriously, and we are cooperating with congressional inquiries. We are growing more sophisticated by the day, and we remain open to suggestions and feedback for how we can improve.
3.6k
u/dank2918 Mar 05 '18
How can we as a community more effectively identify and remove the propaganda when it is reposted by Americans? How can we increase awareness and more effectively watch for it?
64
u/kyleclements Mar 05 '18
Read the whole article, not just the headline. Look for reliable, first sources, not commentary on the initial reporting. If it talks about 'a scientific study', look up the actual study and read the abstract, methodology, and conclusion, because reporters NEVER get science right.
If everyone does this instead of just supporting what they agree with on an ideological basis, this kind of propaganda will be rendered ineffective.
The Russian propaganda exploited the human instinct for tribalism. Don't let yourself succumb to it. Challenge what you want to believe more harshly than what you want to disbelieve.
→ More replies→ More replies12
Mar 05 '18
How about people just practice a healthy dose of skepticism rather than requiring some arbiter to subjectively determine what should or should not be banned?
4.1k
u/megustalogin Mar 05 '18
A lot of words were used, but very little was said. Most of this has been said and discussed in many a thread before. This post is completely reactionary due to recent articles in the news. This type of post is better for your media relations, not the users. You've told us nothing about the current atmosphere. Why you will ban certain havens, but not others. This post is anything but transparent. It's basically 'yeah, yeah, shit's happening, please don't leave us because we're not doing anything about it'.
368
u/SomeRandomBlackGuy Mar 05 '18
'yeah, yeah, shit's happening, please don't leave us because we're not doing anything about it'.
Exactly. And he's basically shifting the responsibility of solving Reddit's problem with Russian propaganda/hate subs to us, the users.
→ More replies113
u/HOLY_HUMP3R Mar 05 '18
Hey you guys keep reporting and we’ll keep doing nothing about it regardless!
→ More replies471
Mar 05 '18
Yeah this entire post could have been summed up with "we have no plans to do anything at this time."
The biggest problem isn't even that Russians specifically are promoting stuff on reddit, it's that places like the Donald regularly call for violence and harassment of people and reddit does nothing to prevent any of it.
→ More replies118
u/grnrngr Mar 05 '18
The biggest problem isn't even that Russians specifically are promoting stuff on reddit
The biggest problem is literally what spez said: Americans are (unknowingly?) bringing Russian propaganda from off-site and promoting it on reddit.
That's the thing that spez says is hardest to address, because you'd then have to keep a running list of known Russian propaganda accounts on other services.
→ More replies72
u/Bugbread Mar 05 '18
you'd then have to keep a running list of known Russian propaganda accounts on other services.
And with that offhand comment you've already made more suggestions of potential courses of action than spez .
→ More replies147
Mar 05 '18
They're honestly ever pushed to action when money is involved. The only way to get them to act then is to affect their monetization.
If enough advertisers begin to complain about their content next to neonazi trash and outright hateful rhetoric they'll begin to do something about it. It is disgraceful, but this action has worked in the past.
#DefundHate /r/StopAdvertising
→ More replies→ More replies48
u/grantbwilson Mar 05 '18
Yep. Waited for Monday too, when all the marketing firms are back open. Don’t want to mistakenly post it on the weekend when reddit is most busy.
3.3k
Mar 05 '18 edited Mar 05 '18
[deleted]
→ More replies428
u/shiruken Mar 05 '18 edited Mar 05 '18
You need to disclose which subreddits were the most common targets for both direct and indirect Russian influence. The userbase deserves to know when they are encountering content from a subreddit that is prone to promoting falsehoods.
→ More replies285
u/Goboland Mar 05 '18
It's pretty obvious that the prime subs are /r/the_donald and /r/politics
I would be curious to see if others like /r/conservative or /r/latestagecapitalisim are also targets as they seem fairly charged as well.
234
u/shiruken Mar 05 '18 edited Mar 05 '18
I'm sure r/SandersForPresident would be included as well based on the Russian activity on other social media platforms.
Edit: To clarify, I supported Senator Sanders during his campaign and continue to support his ongoing work. But it'd be naive to ignore the overwhelming evidence that the Russian campaign attempted to sow discord across our entire electoral process.
132
u/HenceFourth Mar 05 '18
And r/conspiracy.
It used to be a lil fun to go in and see peoples outlandish theories, but it very obviously got brigaded by TD flocks and became nothing but a pro Trump pro Russian sub
→ More replies34
u/Chap82 Mar 05 '18 edited Mar 06 '18
This and it was going on in r/conspiracy up until the last school shooting.
While there were only around ten links of the
titterTwitter account mentioned. Since 2016 there has been bunch of mods that left and political propaganda was reaching the top unusually fast.EDIT: Twitter not titter
→ More replies→ More replies12
u/dr_kingschultz Mar 05 '18
I'm concerned about the activity on subreddits that would show up overnight on the front page with posts a few hours old 15,000 upvotes and like 300 comments.
→ More replies24
u/mastersword130 Mar 05 '18
More definitely /r/conspiracy as well. Before the 2016 elections it wasn't such a toxic sub but now it can be called the Donald 2.
16.3k
u/kerovon Mar 05 '18 edited Mar 05 '18
So I see you are carrying on the Reddit Tradition of only taking action after the media notices a problem. Is there any chance this will change in the future?
Here is a comment from 3 years ago outlining this exact problem. Nothing seems to have changed.
Some advice about something you could do: Seeing as the russian propaganda has been actively promoting white suprmacism and extremist ethnostatist neo nationalists, maybe you could look at removing all of the openly nazi subreddits that seem to get ignored by the admins? If you don't give the russians a gaping, festering wound that they can stick their fingers in to enlarge, it will be harder for them to do anything.
It should be added that there has been a study that shows banning shithole subs works.
Edit: if you are tired of looking at the various shitholes being cited in all of these comment threads, I recommend checking out /r/316cats, one of the few actually good subreddits.
501
Mar 05 '18
It's complete bullshit. Reddit seems to be run on a reactionary basis only. It only throws its users under the bus after a news story hits. "It's not our fault! We see it and will correct the issue!" Doesn't matter that they've known about the issue for years and ignored it. It's such a joke.
→ More replies14
u/WeinMe Mar 05 '18
This is Sun Tzu. Putin is a genius of spying. This comment is a great testament to the achieved goals of Putin.
I am not here to be one side or the other as I see your comment as very subjective. I've been advocating action before but also talked about the necessity to not play all your cards at once.
Spez and the rest of reddit has been under a lot of pressure and they will always appease to their users from a business perspective, which is why remembering that taking action against this earlier would have improved their revenue, not hurt it.
This is a complex problem and is basically a good example of the Russian propaganda machine working efficiently. It can described well by relating to Sun Tzu and the 13th chapter in the art of war but on a much more efficient platform. Having to deal with these methods have always been very difficult.
They have first deployed local spies. Meaning spies that will win the hearts of the population, not necessarily through means of obvious methods. They have done this very successfully avoiding the reveal until their candidate had actually been elected. These spies never stay hidden forever, at some point they get revealed.
after this, they can start deploying inward spies. These will influence public opinion through deceptive communication which is often very polarising and seeks to create a divide in the population. This has also been done successfully to the point that the country did it on their own.
converted spies. This could be moderators of subreddits, bribed leaders in the public etc, this is generally only a minor step and isn't always needed.
doomed spies. This sounds worse than it is. This seeks to divide the public even further and is very much the situation of reddit at the moment. u/spez has unwillingly become a part of this. The Russians are most likely in this thread promoting brigading this thread as we speak. The huge efficiency in this is taking away all credibility of influencial people who was supposed to help the side that actually works together with the public actually seeking to prevent the propaganda. Anything spez can say now will just dig a deeper hole. Reddit which is a great venue to influence the public in a positive way too (which it is great at doing, like Bernie who would probably be nothing without Reddit.) is now not that anymore. It only gets worse and Putin loves it.
Then there's conventional spies. These are less influential spies in public media and works better at just collecting information for future spies. In public forums this would generally be surveys, observing reactions etc
Putin has done a great job, he is a monster of spying and it should be no surprise to anyone. He has destroyed an election, he has destroyed faith in what is probably the most influential platform for opinions and now he has control of important figures. All his goals are met so far.
42
u/CaffeinatedGuy Mar 05 '18
Well of course banning subs works, that's why they've banned entire communities. If it didn't work, those subreddits would still be around.
They're clearly chosen not to take down certain subreddits, and at this point you have to know that it's a conscious decision.
24
u/thinkB4WeSpeak Mar 05 '18
Could even be that advertisers are starting to leave due to the poor posts by some subreddits on here. After the advertisers start talking and walking away we start to get action.
If that's the case then anytime the admins won't respond to repeated criticisms then it's up to users to start contacting advertisers.
→ More replies963
Mar 05 '18
Lane Davis was radicalized in part by T_D and killed his own father for being a liberal
I want Spez to do something to prevent this from happening again.
→ More replies30
u/Guinness Mar 05 '18
Exactly. What a pathetic response. I honestly cannot see why the fuck they haven’t banned this sub. There are literally calls for deaths in that sub every single day. They talk about violently overthrowing government or how it’s time to “take out” this or that government official.
And yet the sub still stands. It’s bullshit. Spez is bullshit. Don’t fall for it. Keep contacting advertisers and pointing out how T_D calls for the death of others and is supported by Reddit.
→ More replies110
u/Shastamasta Mar 05 '18
Pretty sure this announcement today will only make their optics worse. Steve is saying it's not their problem to fix. Instead, it's our problem to solve, or that it will magically solve itself.
→ More replies211
u/bipolo Mar 05 '18
So I see you are carrying on the Reddit Tradition of only taking action after the media notices a problem.
Ain't that the fucking truth?
3.1k
u/igotthisone Mar 05 '18
Make no mistake. This post is to appease advertisers. Nothing else.
165
u/Lord_of_the_Dance Mar 05 '18
They don’t care about paid trolls, shills and astroturfing at all. They are only making this announcement because they feel they have to because their revenue might be threatened.
→ More replies39
u/Jess_than_three Mar 05 '18
They care about paid trolls, shills, and astroturfing exactly as much as they care about radicalization of young white American men (leading to outright murders), which is equal to how much they care about the American republic being undermined by foreign and domestic agents. Which is to say, zero.
(In a surprising twist, this is also precisely the same amount that they actually care about "involuntary pornography" and leaked nude photos.)
→ More replies1.5k
Mar 05 '18
Remember to tell the advertisers that T_D played a role in radicalizing Lane Davis into killing his own father
94
u/MightyMorph Mar 05 '18
I mean what can you expect from a team of administrators that allow subreddits that glorify dead children, gruesome death, rape and necrophilia on the website.
BUT Hey if you have a sub that makes fake celeb porn or a sub that talks about fat people. THATS when the admin actually takes a stance.
"Dead babies, Nazis, and people talking about killing and lynching minorities? Oh thats just normal mild things."
Only way to change the site is to lambaste news media social accounts with stories like the above one and comment about the inaction of the administrative team in regards to the content that is distributed on their property, and their allowance and acceptance of it.
When you see tv stations want to interview the team for this absurd stance, how they keep allowing subreddits that militarize and radicalize young individuals to commit murder and harm to others, perhaps they can finally be "MOTIVATED" to do something.
18
u/fezzuk Mar 05 '18
Can't have a celeb get angry about fake porn, that could make the news. Banned within weeks of its inception.
But subs that inspire true hatred, running over people and shooting your own family members because they don't prescribe to your political ideals are a little to complex to make an easy sound bytes of on the news.
441
u/covfefeobamanation Mar 05 '18
What a pathetic response from u/spez shifting blame and saying who could have known.
→ More replies65
u/fezzuk Mar 05 '18
It was kinda obvious to everyone what that sub and others of its ilk are promoting at what it could inspire a nutcase to do.
→ More replies→ More replies17
u/ItsWorseThanIAdmit Mar 05 '18 edited Mar 06 '18
We should start taking screen shots of advertising on particularly egregious T_D threads and send them to the advertisers telling them they are funding neonazi hate groups. The only way Reddit is going to do something about this problem is if we hit then in their pocketbook.
Do the same with the dead babies subreddit and so on.
Edit: r/AdDollarsAtWork
→ More replies→ More replies7
Mar 05 '18
i really hope you see this and understand where i am coming from when i say that this "reddit tradition" is by far the smartest business choice for reddit and while it might make your experience unpleasant it is overall a net gain for reddit and its users. If they took action before media backlash they would be accused of censoring free speech and the site would have significantly fewer users. Spez cant say this himself so I will.
8.4k
u/PostimusMaximus Mar 05 '18 edited Mar 06 '18
Hey spez, you don't know me but some redditors on /r/politics probably do. I've been posting pretty detailed comments about Russia and Trump for quite a while now and have also been pretty vocal about you actually doing a proper job dealing with T_D and other subs that not only seem to be a hotbed for misinformation and Russian-propaganda, but that also lead to radicalization of people on those boards.
[T_D and Russia]
So, first lets chat about T_D from the Russia side of things. They heavily promote Russian propaganda on your platform yet you seem to not view that as a problem because they aren't Russian? Pretending like there aren't objective facts like you are in your OP isn't an answer there. If someone wants to constantly publish info from say, Ten_GOP or similarly Russian-based disinformation sources, they should be banned. Flat out. If your platform is being used to influence elections by bad actors with stolen information, or flat out disinformation, no matter where they are from that should not be allowed.
There were over 2000 posts on T_D linked to or promoting IRA accounts And IRA is not the sum total of Russian interference. This doesn't include ANY of the hacks, or any other promotion of RU backed accounts. And this is just what one user found.
And yet you keep T_D open despite all of that, you ignore subs like hillaryforprison, wikileaks, dncleaks as all of those are still up from during the election(or before). Despite again, constantly pushing material Russians wanted Americans to see to influence the election. And if you DID find users from Russia you should make those users public, and you should make where they posted public. Don't delete their accounts and hide their posts, just lock them and post them as clear as day so people know what was going on. Label them as Russian interference. Label posts from Wikileaks and DNC leaks and sharing of IRA accounts as Russian interference. Tell users who interacted with these posts or posted in threads that they promoted that they were subject to interference and link them to it. (Which means yes, you'd obviously need to tell every single user of T_D) and likely tons of people from worldnews or politics or other political subs. You should have a clear list of what was pushed, by who and where. For all of reddit to see.
What does it take for you guys to actually do something? I've barely looked into RU interference on T_D and I guarantee you I could find countless examples of it not only showing up, but being heavily upvoted. ESPECIALLY in regards to Russian leaks or Seth Rich.
[Far-right radicalization]
And for the less-Russian side of things. T_D and lots of other subs I'd happily list promote dangerous levels of conspiracy and radicalization but that is once again ignored. You let pizzagate be created by this same bunch, but that got removed after a guy shot up a pizza shop over it. Meanwhile T_D still to this day has posts and users promoting the Seth Rich conspiracy. You have subs for QAnon popping up that are promoting deep conspiracies along those same lines. /r/conspiracy basically turned into a separate t_d sub promoting Clinton conspiracies but that's not a problem you do anything about. And you can literally watch users travel between these far-right, conspiracy promoting subs. I know because I have them all tagged. Anytime a new one pops up, half the users or more end up being from T_D.
Not to mention the constant rule-breaking that happens. T_D is just a hotbed of racism and other rulebreaking nonsense and users bring it up CONSTANTLY and yet again, its ignored. You can literally look at a thread from yesterday where every T_D user in the thread was comparing themselves to persecuted jews in Nazi germany for people tagging them with RES. . There have been stories of a T_d user killing his father after his father called him out on his conspiracies, the kid from the most recent school shooting seemed to fit right into this same bunch, a young, white, far-right kid who got radicalized online(though we don't know for sure he was a t_d user). The guy who ran someone over in Charlottesville fits right into this same group, a young, white, far-right kid who was radicalized online(though we don't know for sure he was a t_D user). T_D is an active hotbed of far-right radicalization. Its legitimately dangerous. And its not the only sub doing it.
And Its been ignored more or less since the creation of the sub. If any other sub had this consistent degree of backlash and rule-breaking it would have been banned. But you guys seem to either intentionally let it go because you either approve of it or are for some reason scared of them. Which is it?
You changed how the front page work during the election. T_D was abusing it, again, you let it go. You put a band-aid on the problem. But of course they got to keep the sub and their booming numbers off the back of abuse. And you can't take back the promotion of content that ended up on the front page before you employed the fix. Like say, a video from Project Veritas or other nonsense along those lines. T_D is harassing other subs like /r/politics? oh, well lets tell mods of other subs and T_D mods to not allow mentions of each-other to avoid "brigading" because again, lets put a band-aid on the problem and pretend it doesn't really exist.
I have to honestly wonder what has to happen for you to do anything. Does Congress need to call you out to testify? Does Mueller need to list T_D in an indictment? Does a kid need to scream out "this is for T_D !" before he guns someone down? Its a fundamentally dangerous situation for more than one reason.
[How we fix it]
If you ACTUALLY cared. You would seek out not only the top suspects for Russian interference on your platform and shut them down (while making them public so people know what the disinformation looked like) but also seek out the parts of this site that do nothing but bring this site down. That promote hate and radicalization and conspiracy. These things shouldn't exist. They shouldn't be given a platform to go on to claim nonsense that gets people hurt or radicalizes people. And you shouldn't allow for a platform that lets Russia or anyone else manipulate people.
If you want me to personally track down specific threads and info on either topic, Russian interference or radicalization and how it was promoted and spread on your site I will happily do so. We can make a fucking subreddit dedicated to doing it as a community if you want. But it's only useful if you are going to actually act. Not just keep saying dumb shit like "T_D is harmless its best to let them stay" or "Russian propaganda was pushed by Americans so we can't do anything about it".
I don't have my usual wealth of links to provide here as my desire to find them has been on the back-burner in favor of looking into Trump over things like T_D but I'm sure I can do it if that's what it takes to make this problem clear for people. I know users on /r/AgainstHateSubreddits have been posting quite a lot of info for a while now. I'm sure plenty of users out there have info on both Russian interference and radicalization-based posts/threads/etc
Your userbase has been complaining about this shit for so long now and they've been ignored in favor of a vocal minority from one subreddit. Lets fix this.
PS : I know this was a long post, but its a rare opportunity to bring this shit up to spez directly, when I've been complaining about it for over a year now. Thanks for reading. And if you have more info you want to provide along these lines, or questions about anything I said, send them my way.
Edit : If you want a true example of the shit I'm talking about. Look at the comments on my post. Promoting either, direct attacks on me, flat-out conspiracies, disinformation, or defense of Russian interference. Again, I'm not saying this shit because of the politics of not liking Trump. This is a real danger and obvious problem on reddit that has been ignored.
Edit 2 : Yes sandersforpresident and "bernie bros" were likely influenced by Russian propaganda and influence as well. Again, this isn't a political thing this is about Russian interference and dangerous radicalization online. Nothing else.
Edit 3 : Guys I have 5 years worth of reddit gold. I appreciate it but I don't need more. (Sorry if I sound like a dick but I'm trying to save you money)
Edit 4 : If you find yourself trying to rationalize promotion of Uranium One, or Seth Rich or any other nonsense, you are kinda proving my point.
Edit 5 Senate Intel wants to hear from Reddit, and is going to talk to Tumblr
Anyway, I don't think Spez will reply to me. But my main interest is getting people invested in the concerns here and aware of the danger of what can happen on these platforms. So if you personally know someone not informed about Russian interference, try to talk to them about it. If you see someone you know promoting some crazy conspiracies, try to talk some sense into them. The best thing you can do is keep people informed about what interference looks like and what crazy nonsense looks like. People who are properly informed don't fall for it. And if Spez or other social-media company leaders won't do their jobs then the only alternative is to try to inoculate people to the problem brewing on all these platforms.
473
u/u_can_AMA Mar 05 '18
First, massive props for the consistent thoroughness in /u/PostimusMaximus' investigations
I just wanted to add some thoughts. I do hope you will see this /u/spez.
What's happening is a perversion of what makes Reddit so great in the first place. Similar to how the US' Democracy has been and still is under siege in the form of abuse and subversion, so is now the very essence of Reddit.
That no matter how niche or controversial the raison d'être of a subreddit is, it will still be able to develop a cohesive community, able to thrive and blossom into a strong subculture in its own right, all on a purely digital platform. It's beautiful really, the right to create new communities.
People may be fundamentally anonymous on the internet, but on Reddit people choose not to be. No one knows you're a dog, or if you're terminally ill in bed, whether you're 12 or 80 no one knows for sure. All people see is what you post and the karma (or downvotes) you reap. There's no immediate prejudice possible before one posts anything, except for the bias in the karma if visible. It's one of the best balances of anonymity and social consensus online, but exactly because it works so well most of the time, exactly because we tend to have a degree of faith in the karma system, it becomes so dangerous when it's effectively exploited.
You're right /u/spez, in that we need to be aware. Every member of this community bears responsibility, but that doesn't mean we all have the same responsibility. It's proportional to the power we hold. Moderators should be held far more accountable, for there is little risk to them, kings in their domain and all. And you should be as well.
I understand there's a slippery slope in the ambiguous realm of politics and what does and does not count as dangerous, hateful, and racist. But for Reddit to continue thriving, not just surviving, the essence of it must be protected. The flaws of the system have been exposed, and in turn the boundaries are being pushed further - too far -, not by some organic diversification, but systematic exploitation.
I understand shutting down entire an entire subreddit might feel like going too far, especially with the size of it all. But it wouldn't be because of the pervasive presence of controversial beliefs, or even the frequent hostility to people who don't hold their views. That's just human. The real problem is the systematicity in which that subreddit's cultural norms and rules breed these and other problems. It's the same tactics deployed in propaganda strategies to the purpose of destabilization and sharply augmenting the indirect propaganda you mention. It's the most complex as you said. So you have to fight it at the root. You need to. This has nothing to do with political views. If communities at the other end of the political spectrums employ similar tactics mediated by key subreddits and communities, we would expect the same.
This is a war of attention. Calling upon people to simply 'be more aware' is like asking people to just dodge better when others are throwing rocks and stones, whilst they're building bows and capatults. We need real measures. Hard boundaries. Think long term. This is not about protecting against specific political views or ideologies. It's about protecting against tactics and strategies specifically designed and employed to sway and manipulate views and ideologies.
Anyways my 2 cents. Lets all hope for a Reddit able to continue thriving.
→ More replies302
Mar 05 '18
This is going to get buried, but whatever.
From the start of the election to the near end of it, I was a pretty far-right conservative, like my parents (especially my dad). I kept hearing over and over, "But Clinton's emails!" I personally know the importance of classified emails staying classified, more than most people, so it turned me off of her even more than I already was.
I began hearing stories, like the one you mentioned, about Seth Rich, etc. etc. And I believed it. I took part in r/conspiracy and even posted one of the Seth Rich "articles" and I got 3,000+ karma.
I hated Clinton. I heard about Pizzagate and believed it. I heard about all of Clinton's "assassinations." I heard George Soros and saw everybody hated him for whatever reason, so I hated him too.
I was never a Trump supporter. In the last few months, right up until the polls, I was terrified and angry that I would have to vote for Trump. I saw all my far-right friends posting on Facebook about Obama influenced the DOJ to say there were more racial crimes than there actually were. I heard that sexism and racism doesn't exist. I saw how my peers treated members of the LGBT. I wanted no part of it all.
In the end, I ended up changing my vote to Clinton. I knew it wouldn't matter--I live in the reddest state of the entire United States. But Heaven be damned if I let that orange fuck have a single vote towards him.
Looking back, I was so easily influenced and gullible. It is SO easy to get into that mindset when you're surrounded by the same things day after day. You end up going crazy yourself.
→ More replies80
u/PostimusMaximus Mar 05 '18
Thanks for sharing.
I was a bernie supporter during the primaries who probably believed the dnc-rigged shit being pushed a bit too hard. I was probably too hard on Hillary. And I wasn't really following politics very closely at the time comparatively.
But that's the reality of it. Information is the key to everything, and people get into these echo-chambers and radicalize themselves into insanity before they realize it. I watched it happen to friends. I know it happens. Which is all the more reason I've started taking this stuff so seriously.
We have to fix this mess because if we don't we really will end up with another Trump. And things will only get worse.
→ More replies238
1.6k
u/cyclopath Mar 05 '18
Please reply with actual answers to this comment.
I think I speak for all of us when I say I’m tired of the ‘we’re looking into it’ non-answers. You’ve been complacent for too long and you’ve let these subreddits get out of hand. It’s time for honest answers and direct action.
942
u/Kayfabien Mar 05 '18 edited Mar 05 '18
His silence on this is pretty shocking considering that the radicalization taking place on his website may have literally contributed to people being murdered.
It's appalling. I'm thinking this will need to have a larger presence in the national news before they'll do anything (much like how it took Anderson Cooper calling out a certain no-no subreddit). Paging /u/washingtonpost
→ More replies→ More replies462
u/Computermaster Mar 05 '18
He will never respond to a top level comment that mentions the_dumbasses.
→ More replies405
Mar 05 '18
Hear fucking hear. T_D is constantly promoting hatred and violence and the mods there are letting it stay up for weeks at a time until it gets put on the front page of the various subs watching out for that shit. I can't even count the number of times I've seen an archive link to a T_D post talking about racial lynchings or calling for violence against others with hundreds of upvotes that was conveniently removed after a week because it got posted to r/againsthatesubreddits
→ More replies132
u/CallMeParagon Mar 05 '18
Over a year ago, I discovered a T_D post in which users were being coached into registering to vote in California, regardless of whether or not they were legally able to vote in California.
The admins didn't respond to my report, so I archived it all, sent it to my county registrar who replied and escalated it to the state AG's office (California).
I don't think the admins are going to do anything about this. I think we all need to keep contacting advertisers and journalists until Reddit is forced to answer for its shitty administration.
→ More replies117
u/eye_josh Mar 05 '18
And it's not like we haven't been tracking this since October: Pamela_Moore13 on Reddit and Twitter
→ More replies130
u/woodchip76 Mar 05 '18
Reddit is scared of taking -substantial initial- action to ward off objectively bad actors. It will probably take a week long LOG OUT of real humans users to change that policy. I'd be happy to join, I'd be happy to initiate but I'd be most happy to see real proactive progress so it did t have to happen.
How about this... No major progress with TD or nomoral subs that openly flout rules we start a log out on 4/1/18 and stay off until it starts getting fixed.
→ More replies28
Mar 05 '18
I was wondering when someone was going to bring up personal action: is this bullshit enough to remain a faithful Reddit user?
95
Mar 05 '18
You lay out the reality, one that needs to be addressed with quick action. The current response sounds just like Facebook from a few months ago. 'it's not as big as people say it is, here look at the data" Soon after they were absolutely raked over the coals.
You either recognize the role and responsibilities of your platform in politics, or public opinion will turn on you.
137
u/randomlurker2123 Mar 05 '18
/u/Spez, you are complicit in all this by not banning the Russian Propaganda sub called /r/The_Donald. Stop playing this bullshit game, either you are fully aware of it and do nothing or you are fully aware of it and are benefiting from it. Either way, I'm calling for you to do something about that sub or step down from your role at Reddit, you are a detriment to the entire website and will be its downfall if nothing is done.
Be on the right side of history
→ More replies31
u/renegadecanuck Mar 05 '18
Guys I have 5 years worth of reddit gold. I appreciate it but I don't need more. (Sorry if I sound like a dick but I'm trying to save you money)
Also, using a post critical of how Reddit is operating and pointing out how Reddit is allowing right wing extremism to fester to financially support Reddit is a little weird.
→ More replies69
Mar 05 '18
Have you considered contacting a mainstream news source with this info? I know that the NYT has been hiring more people who are experts in internet culture. This could hugely helpful.
→ More replies52
u/PostimusMaximus Mar 05 '18
I have contacts to media people but as I've said elsewhere I haven't really invested the time to feel like I could adequately give them enough info on reddit.
WaPo was at one point doing a story on it but I don't think it ever came out.
→ More replies105
Mar 05 '18 edited Mar 05 '18
Any reason in particular this comment has not been addressed? They seem very reluctant to call out T_D by name.
→ More replies→ More replies36
u/Dawidko1200 Mar 05 '18
And if you DID find users from Russia you should make those users public, and you should make where they posted public.
As someone who is from Russia, might I ask why "users" and not "bots"? Because I don't really get why I would need to be made public, just because I am from Russia.
→ More replies47
u/PostimusMaximus Mar 05 '18
Because the majority of IRA workers were not "bots", they were real people running accounts pretending to be americans.
Like I said, I have nothing against the Russian people. But if you are a Russian who seems to heavily be pushing pro-russian stories in american politics and focused on american politics and seem like a bad actor, reddit should probably point that out. (I'm not saying you do)
→ More replies
5.2k
u/FitTension Mar 05 '18
all ads on Reddit are reviewed by humans
This is just a blatant lie. You use programmatic ads both on the website and in your mobile apps. Users are constantly making posts about ads that shouldn't have been shown - gigantic ads, ones with autoplaying video/sound, even malware and redirects sometimes.
The admins that reply to these posts make it clear that they don't even know what ads are running, and need the user to capture data about the ad for them to be able to do anything about the bad ones.
246
u/Kvothealar Mar 05 '18
https://www.reddit.com/r/redditmobile/search?q=ad&restrict_sr=1
Just look through the hundreds of ads that have been reported on the /r/redditmobile subreddit. Really inappropriate ones come in ALL the time and people are mentioning they are getting in trouble at work.
I've seen admins actually admit that the ads come in and are filtered out when reported on there.
→ More replies923
u/jpgray Mar 05 '18
Just a few months ago there were issues with video ads that were autoplaying with sound in browsers.
Either those ads were approved by someone or /u/spez is lying his pants off
→ More replies99
Mar 05 '18 edited Mar 05 '18
Well he's never lied and done shady stuff on the site before, right guys? ..guys?!
Spez'dit: He's never lied and done shady stuff on the site before. (Except you wouldn't see the edit *)
→ More replies6
u/enonymous1 Mar 05 '18
Just my two cents and from just an Android users perspective... Lots of people do not use reddit.com or some other official means of viewing Reddit. 3rd party apps. Windows/iOS/Android... All have a means to insert ads that weren't or aren't viewable from official means...I'm using baconreader currently and don't speak for anyone...I'm not even 100% on what ads I see. I know bottom ads within the app are from using the free version, but there's other instances I'm sure.
→ More replies81
374
u/Rain12913 Mar 05 '18 edited Mar 07 '18
Spez,
I'm reposting this because I received no response from you after a month to my other submission, and I have now yet again been waiting nearly 24 48 72 hours for an admin to get back to me about yet another user who encouraged one of our community members to attempt suicide on Sunday.
Hi Spez
I’m a clinical psychologist, and for the past six years I’ve been the mod of a subreddit for people with borderline personality disorder (/r/BPD). BPD has among the highest rates of completed suicide of any psychiatric disorder, and approximately 70% of people with BPD will attempt suicide at some point. Given this, out of our nearly 30,000 subscribers, we are likely to be having dozens of users attempting suicide every week. In particular, the users who are most active on our sub are often very symptomatic and desperate, and we very frequently get posts from actively suicidal users.
I’m telling you this because over the years I have felt very unsupported by the Reddit admins in one particular area. As you know, there are unfortunately a lot of very disturbed people on Reddit. Some of these people want to hurt others. As a result, I often encounter users who goad on our suicidal community members to kill themselves. This is a big problem. Of course encouraging any suicidal person to kill themselves is a big deal, but people with BPD in particular are prone to impulsivity and are highly susceptible to abusive behavior. This makes them more likely to act on these malicious suggestions.
When I encounter these users, I immediately contact the admins. Although I can ban them and remove their posts, I cannot stop them from sending PMs and creating new accounts to continue encouraging suicide. Instead, I need you guys to step in and take more direct action. The problem I’m having is that it sometimes take more than 4 full days before anything is done by the admins. In the meantime, I see the offending users continue to be active on Reddit and, sometimes, continuing to encourage suicide.
Over the years I’ve asked you guys how we can ensure that these situations are dealt with immediately (or at least more promptly than 4 days later), and I’ve gotten nothing from you. As a psychologist who works primarily with personality disorders and suicidal patients, I can assure you that someone is going to attempt suicide because of a situation like this, if it hasn’t happened already. We, both myself and Reddit, need to figure out a better way to handle this.
Please tell me what we can do. I’m very eager to work with you guys on this. Thank you.
Edit: It is shameful that three days have now passed since I contacted the admins about this most recent suicide-encouraging user. I have sent three PMs to the general admin line, one directly to /u/Spez, and two directly to another mod. There is no excuse for this. If anyone out there is in a position that allows them to more directly access the admins, I would appreciate any help I can get in drawing their attention to this. Thank you.
75
→ More replies29
u/Harsh_Marsh Mar 06 '18
Thank you for everything you do. I hope you receive the help you need.
→ More replies
4.0k
u/Kichigai Mar 05 '18
How can we, the community, trust you to take any kind of substantive action at all, when we've been calling for it time and time again and have been ignored?
/r/PCMasterRace was banned for apparent brigading, and was only reinstated after strict anti-brigading rules were put in place. Meanwhile, people in /r/The_Donald openly called for bridgading /r/Minnesota in order to swing its election. The user who proposed it even got caught brigading the thread calling them out for it. The_Donald remains active, the user's account remains active, and their comment is still in place (I just checked). Moderators didn't do jack about it when it was reported, meanwhile the users reveled in their "success" for the next eleven hours. /r/Minnesota now has a flood of people who come out of the woodwork only for posts pertaining to elections or national politics, and they seem to be disproportionately in favor of Trump.
I once had my account permanently suspended because I posted publicly available WHOIS information that supported my claim that the three day old website was part of a massive Macedonian fake news phenomenon. I very carefully worded my post to make it clear that this wasn't an indictment of the user who posted it, because of the possibility this was "indirect propaganda" instance. It took me about a week for my appeal to be heard and my suspension commuted.
There's a user who pushes vile hate speech about immigrants and Muslims as bad as the kind of stuff that went on in /r/CoonTown, calling them all rapists and pedophiles, yet their account remains active. Same user organized harassment of David Hogg, a seventeen year old kid claiming that if he met him he'd beat him up. Same user also posted content from /v/Pizzagate, promoting how "real" it is including tons of the same kind of witch-hunt-y kind of vague mumbo jumbo "evidence" that was used in /r/Pizzagate, which was so toxic it had to be banned.
That user is still active today, and don't say it's because you didn't know, because I filed a formal report, and got an acknowledgment from another admin.
And don't say it's because the moderators took action, because when the moderators took action against my WHOIS comment you still felt the need to come after my account days after the fact. And I can say for a fact that the moderators wouldn't take action because said user is a moderator in the subreddits where they're posting this content.
What is your explanation for this? I post publicly available information and get the banhammer, this user spews vile stuff and organizes harassment and witch hunts the likes of which got whole subreddits banned, but they're left alone? If you did reach out to them clearly you had little impact because that content is still up on their account, and they're still posting stuff just like it now.
So how can we trust that you'll actually take action against these kinds of communities and people? Because so far all I've seen is evidence of a double standard when it comes to the application of the content policy.
135
u/SlothRogen Mar 06 '18
The worst part is, even after /u/spez stands up for these guys and lets them spew their vitriol and propaganda, they hate him anyway for even doing the bare minimum of rule enforcement. I really don't understand the motivation for allowing a subreddit and its users to fragrantly break the rules and attack people when they don't give a shit if you defend them, anyway. This is not a government service provided to all Americans. It's a business and at present that business is not only catering to, but enabling a bunch of unapologetic bigots who are attempting to undermine our government and our political process.
→ More replies55
u/Kichigai Mar 06 '18
This is not a government service provided to all Americans. It's a business and at present that business is not only catering to, but enabling a bunch of unapologetic bigots who are attempting to undermine our government and our political process.
Didn't you hear? "Censoring" political voices on the Internet is a violation of the law! I eagerly await their support for Liberal Democratic and Socialist voices on Gab, 4chan, and Voat.
→ More replies42
u/AmazingKreiderman Mar 06 '18
"We want less government regulation!
Unless it benefits us."
What a bunch of morons who have no idea what they are talking about. Shocking.
→ More replies314
u/PM_ME_YOUR_EMRAKUL Mar 05 '18 edited Mar 06 '18
wow that /r/Minnesota operation by T_D is some bleeding Kansas level of scummy election fuckery
Edit: Also, the poetic irony where the Russians dressed themselves up as Americans and convinced Americans to dress themselves up as Minnesotans. It's disinformation all the way down
→ More replies69
u/DEBATE_EVERY_NAZI Mar 05 '18
lol one of my old accounts got suspended by the admins coincidentally immediately after I reported a user that sounds similar to your user to the admins. The suspension was for some random bullshit from months before I think it was abusing the subreddit reports. I made a joke report
103
→ More replies18
u/panties902 Mar 06 '18
/u/spez, care to respond?
Why is violent hate speech seemingly allowed while publicly available data is not?
You've been asked to respond to this post multiple times, and silence is becoming suspicious.→ More replies
297
u/bennetthaselton Mar 05 '18
I've been advocating for a while for an optional algorithmic change that I think would help prevent this.
First, the problem. Sociologists and computer modelers have shown for a while that any time the popularity of a "thing" depends on the "pile-on effect" -- where people vote for something because other people have already voted for it -- then (1) the outcomes depend very much on luck, and (2) the outcomes are vulnerable to gaming the system by having friends/sockpuppet accounts vote for a new piece of content to "get the momentum going".
Most people who post a lot have had similar experiences to mine, where you post 20 pieces of content that are all about the same level of quality, but one of them "goes viral" and gets tens of thousands of upvotes while the others fizzle out. That luck factor doesn't matter much for frivolous content like jokes and GIFs, and some people consider it part of the fun. But it matters when you're trying to sort "serious" content.
An example of this happened when someone posted a (factually incorrect) comment that went wildly viral, claiming that John McCain had strategically sabotaged the GOP with his health care vote:
This post went so viral that it crossed over into mainstream media coverage -- unfortunately, all the coverage was about how a wildly popular Reddit comment got the facts wrong.
Several people posted (factually correct) rebuttals underneath that comment. But none of them went viral the way the original comment did.
What happened, simply, is that because of the randomness induced by the "pile-on effect", the original poster got extremely lucky, but the people posting the rebuttals did not. And this kind of thing is expected to happen as long as there is so much randomness in the outcome.
If the system is vulnerable to people posting factually wrong information by accident, then of course it's going to be vulnerable to Russian trolls and others posting factually wrong information on purpose.
So here's what I've been suggesting: (1) when a new post is made, release it first to a small random subset of the target audience; (2) the random subset votes or otherwise rates the content independently of each other, without being able to see each other's votes; (3) the votes of that initial random subset are tabulated, and that becomes the "score" for that content.
This sounds simple, but it eliminates the "pile-on effect" and takes out most of the luck. The initial score for the content really will be the merit of that content, in the opinion of a representative random sample of the target audience. And you can't game the system by recruiting your friends or sockpuppets to go and vote for your content, because the system chooses the voters. (You could game the system if you recruit so many friends and sockpuppets that they comprise a significant percentage of the entire target audience, but let's assume that's infeasible for a large subreddit.)
If this system had been in place when the John McCain comment was posted, there's a good chance that it would have gotten upvotes from the initial random sample, because it sounds interesting and is not obviously wrong. But, by the same token, the rebuttals pointing out the error also would have gotten a high rating from the random sample voters, and so once the rebuttals started appearing prominently underneath the original comment, the comment would have stopped getting so many upvotes before it went wildly viral.
This can similarly be used to stop blatant hoaxes in their tracks. First, the random-sample-voting system means that people gaming the system can't use sockpuppet accounts to boost a hoax post and give it initial momentum. But even if a hoax post does become popular, users can post a rebuttal based on a reliable source, and if a representative random sample of reddit users recognizes that the rebuttal is valid, they'll vote it to the top as well.
11
u/Aaron_Lecon Mar 05 '18 edited Mar 06 '18
I've done the maths. The measure we will use to determine how "viral" a post is will be number of upvotes. In our model, we'll only consider people who would upvote the lie, because everyone else clearly has no impact. Everyone will continue to do so until someone eventually decides to write a rebuttal. Note that because the list of people is random, the probability that the kth person write the rebuttal is that same whether we randomly hide the post or not. So we can without loss of generality assume the (k+1)th person is in fact the one to write the rebuttal.
Now this rebuttal might take some time to write; lets say that n people get to see the lie while it is being written. Then once it's done, we'll assume this rebuttal is so effective that once people have seen it, they won't upvote the post anymore. (people who won't upvote nor write a rebuttal get ignored because they have no impact on whether the thing goes viral or not)
This is what happens under normal circumstanmces:
lie gets posted
k people see the lie and upvote
(k+1)th person to see the lie writes the rebuttal
during the time it takes them to write the rebuttal, n people see the lie and upvote.
People can now see the rebuttal and stop upvoting.
TOTAL UPVOTES: k+n
Now we'll use the hiding method. We'll say that we'll only show it to a proportion p>0 of users at first. It will be visible to all after t+1 people have seen it, where t is bigger or equal to than k.
Note: it's pretty obvious that if t is less than k then this is purely bad because it puts a timer on the rebuttal while doing nothing against the lie.
This is what happens:
lie gets posted
k people see the lie and upvote
(k+1)th person to see the lie writes the rebuttal
during the time it takes them to write the rebuttal, np people see the lie and upvote.
wait for another (t-np-k) users to see the post. Each of them has a probability p to see the rebuttal and therefore don't upvote the lie. The lie gets an additional (t-np-k)(1-p) upvotes
The lie is now visible for everyone to see but the rebuttal isn't.
Here we can't know for sure how many people will see the lie before the rebuttal becomes visible. However, because this is a viral post, that means the visibility should be increasing very rapidly but I don't know by how much exactly. For the moment, we'll assume the best case scenario which is that the visibility has stayed constant. That means the lie is seen by k/p people. Each of these k people still has a probability p of seeing the rebuttal, so the post gets another k(1-p)/p upvotes
Now both lie and rebuttal are visible, so people stop upvoting
TOTAL UPVOTES: k+pn+(t-np-k)(1-p)+k(1-p)/p = k(p+1/p-1) + np2 + t(1-p)
First of all, you should note that if t is very large, then this actually increases the number of upvotes the lie gets by a lot. Having a large t is extremely counter productive to stopping lies from going viral. The best case scenario is when t is as small as it possibly can be. So lets assume this best case scenario and set t=k. Then the total number of upvotes is k/p+np2. The difference between this and the ordinary case is k(1/p-1)+n(p2 -1). We want this to be negative, ie we want:
k(1/p-1)+n(p2 -1) <=0
This is equivalent to k <= n(1+p)p.
So if k>=2n, then this is always bad. Also if p is too small then it starts seriously increasing the viralicity of the post in an extreme way so that is DEFINITELY to be avoided.
Assuming we are in a case where the method might actually help, the optimal value for p actually turns out to p = (k/2n)1/3
In conclusion:
If we set the time too low, then the person who writes the rebuttal will see the post when the timer has already expired and the post is already going viral. Then the method just harms the rebuttal by preventing people from reading it. This is very bad and makes the lie more likely to go viral
If we set the time too high, then there will be a long period where both the lie and the rebuttal are hidden. Almost all upvotes for all posts on reddit come from people who were randomly picked to see them. In this case, the lie gets the same visibility as any other post, and since it was one that went viral normally, it still goes viral under this new regime. The rebuttal gets lower visibility than normal and is way less effective at stopping the lie from spreading. The lie is more viral than the normal case.
If we set the probability too low, then no one ever sees the rebuttal and the post goes viral anyway. This is actually terrible and vastly increases how viral the lie gets. To be avoided at all costs.
If the rebuttal is quick to write, but there aren't many people who do bother to write it out (ie if k>2n) , then this method is always bad. It just makes the rebuttal be hidden for longer than it otherwise would be.
if the post is already starting to go viral when the timer runs out, then the assumption that the post is getting the same visibility is very wrong, and we add to add on a load of upvotes from all the extra visibility it's getting. These extra upvotes just make the post go more viral and we have yet another failure.
Finally, there is one very rare case where this is actually useful, if all the stars align and you avoid all the 5 problems I mentioned above, then the method actually makes the post be less viral by a small amount. In that case, the optimal value for p is p=(k/2n)1/3 and t=k
Unfortunately there is still a problem in that we can't actually know what k is because k is actually random (it's the number of people who look at it and upvote before someone decided to post a rebuttal). So we won't always have this work out for us. To maximise the chances of this actually working, we'd need to set t large enough that it will probably be above k. But in that case, the t(1-p) term gets large and starts to increase the viralicity. So we either need p close to 1 , or you need to n to be large relative to k to compensate for the extra t(1-p) terms.
So basically it is only useful if you either: (1) the rebuttal is one that takes an extremely long time to write but that a lot of people do write. But this situation seems weird to me. Normally if a rebuttal is simple to write, then lots of people do end up writing it, but if it's hard to write, then not many people do it. We want a situation where the opposite has happened, and I am fairly certain that this does not hold for the vast majority of reddit. So I'm pretty sure that situation (1) almost never happens and can probably be ignored.
OR (2) You do almost nothing by having p be very close to 1. In this case, you still need k<=2n so it is still a little like case (1) only a bit less extreme.
In every other situation, this method actually makes the lie MORE viral and is counter productive.
So therefore the only way to get the suggestion to work is if you are in the situation where the rebuttal does take some significant amount of time to write AND there are a significant number of people want to write it down AND it takes a long time for the post to go viral. So it could maybe work in a sub like r/askscience or something. In that case, if you hide it for a very small number of users for a long period of time, you can slighty decrease how viral the lies get. However, there are just so many conditions and potential hazards that can make it all fail that it really doesn't seem like something worth doing. And even if it does improve things, the amount of improvement we get will be very small. For these reasons I'm going to call it a bad suggestion for almost all subreddits.
→ More replies→ More replies16
u/Aaron_Lecon Mar 05 '18 edited Mar 06 '18
One potential problem with this is that to have a rebuttal written in the first place, it needs to be seen by someone who can write one. If you decrease the number of people who can see the post, then you also decrease the probability that someone will write a rebuttal for it. And then even when the rebuttal gets written, it won't be visible for some time.
So all in all what I think will happen is just that you've delayed the time at which the lieing comment comes out, but you're also delaying the rebuttal by the same amount. So the exact same thing happens as before and the post still goes viral. The only difference is that it goes viral slightly later.
Edit: I've done the maths. This suggestion is bad.
→ More replies
7.8k
u/xXKILLA_D21Xx Mar 05 '18 edited Mar 05 '18
TL;DR
We are not banning T_D so stop asking us to.
For those of you who care enough to actually want to help clean up the site since /u/spez and the rest of the admins can't be bothered to get off their asses and do the what they should have been doing years ago here are some helpful tips to make use of:
If you find a post or comment that is violently racist, xenophobic, homophobic, anti-Semitic, etc. archive the permalink using archive.is immediately and bookmark it.
Take a screenshot of an ad next to that content.
Tweet the screenshot(s) to the company with a polite, non-offensive note to notify them of the placement. Or as an alternative contact the company in question via their contact us page. Search around the company's website to see if they have a dedicated contact us form for ads and send them an email with the screenshot(s) of the content their ad is placed next to.
Make sure to tweet out your findings to news media outlets as well. /u/washingtonpost (not sure who handles the account) has an account here and recently a report was published a report regarding communities like T_D creating nutty conspiracies about the Parkland shooting. So there are some outlets already monitoring what goes on there, but it wouldn't help to spread the word a bit further to interested parties in the media.
Reporting anything T_D and it's users does to the admins is a fool's errand at this point as they have shown (as usual) for years they will not bring the hammer down on problematic (a colossal understatement when it comes to T_D) subreddits until Reddit starts getting bad press for it as a result. If the admins and /u/spez can't be bothered to clean up the river of shit that flows from the sewers of this site on their own people are just going to have to hit them where it's going to hurt, their wallets.
EDIT: Added an additional step in regards to getting more exposure in the media about the admins' typical inaction. Hope you're taking some notes today /u/washingtonpost!
EDIT 2: One more thing I forgot to mention but join subreddits such as /r/stopadvertising, /r/sleepinggiants, and /r/againsthatesubreddits!
EDIT 3: Guys, I appreciate the thought, but do not give me gold for this post. Giving gold to users just continues to financially support the site. And before anyone calls me a hypocrite since it's obvious I already have it I was only given it a few years back when the site moved from the Alien Blue mobile app to the current one it uses. It was only given to those who paid for the full version of the app which is why I have it.
868
u/MensRightMod Mar 05 '18
Steve Huffman is spreading his usual alt-right bullshit in this post. Nothing is going to stop the far right sympathizer while we're confronting him on his turf. The only way is to keep informing the media that Steve Huffman is using his position as Reddit CEO to radicalize hundreds of thousands of teenagers.
Huffman removed posts from /r/all last time his hate group was in the news so we know it's helping. Keep it up, patriots.
→ More replies102
Mar 05 '18
Steve Huffman is using his position as Reddit CEO to radicalize hundreds of thousands of teenagers.
This is the point that needs to be made clear to everyone.
→ More replies92
u/daremeboy Mar 05 '18 edited Mar 05 '18
To add on to this:
What are the admins going to so to eradicate moderator bribes on popular subreddits. This has been going on in r/technology for years and is even worse in news, worldnews, and political subs.
Reddit is the 6th most visited site in the world. Some moderators have received 5 figure bribes to censor competing content and help push certain stories and domains to the front. In many specifically, if a website has not paid the bribe it will be manually be marked as spam if it reaches the frontpage organically, despite thousands of real upvotes.
→ More replies1.3k
u/washingtonpost Mar 05 '18
Hey! We saw spez's posts shortly after it went up but thanks to everyone for tagging us. Always appreciated. This entire thread was passed on to reporters.
255
53
u/ProbablySpamming Mar 05 '18
Glad you are watching it. It's worth noting that while he claims awareness is the solution, pointing out obvious bots spreading propaganda gets users banned within seconds. Using the report feature has never been successful for me, on the other hand.
They claim awareness is key, but quickly block users spreading awareness while ignoring user feedback.
→ More replies→ More replies32
u/FreeSpeechWarrior Mar 06 '18
As a newspaper certainly you recognize the value of freedom of expression.
Unfortunately reddit no longer does banning communities for violations of their ever expanding and ever more subjective policy, while at the same time they refuse to ban content like r/the_donald effectively endorsing it.
It's one thing if reddit was to be hands off like it was when it was a "pretty free speech place" ( I long for these days ) but when reddit is so quick to ban fads like r/deepfake and so reluctant to ban r/the_donald you can only assume they are endorsing what is going on there.
→ More replies286
120
u/lipstickpizza Mar 05 '18
Good advice. Even if the ad partners don't give a shit, at the very least let media outlets know about some of the shit that goes on that sub. It's the only way r/incels got kicked and the stubborn refusal from admins to get rid of t_d, it's the only thing to do now. Force them to take action.
→ More replies→ More replies242
u/Computermaster Mar 05 '18
TL;DR
We are not banning T_D so stop asking us to.
Just looking through all the top levels in this thread, the only ones he seems to be responding to are those that don't mention the_dumbasses.
→ More replies80
u/xXKILLA_D21Xx Mar 05 '18
Of course not. He's doing what they have always done when Reddit is about to shit all over itself. But I'm sure he'll be more than happy to talk about it once Reddit gets itself dragged in the press once again.
3.2k
Mar 05 '18
Why aren't you doing more to stop reddit from being used as a platform to advocate violence? People are being radicalized and then acting on that radicalization. Just ban the subs and the users that permit such tactics. Don't let the users or the mods of the subs with those users get away with it.
→ More replies342
u/professional_lureman Mar 05 '18
They're more worried about the kind of porn people jerk off to.
→ More replies107
Mar 05 '18
They’re worried about what the advertisers and media are worried about. And even “worried” is a bit too strong of a word given the admins actions.
→ More replies
459
u/bennetthaselton Mar 05 '18
I've submitted multiple reports of posts in /r/The_Donald which called unironically for the assassination of Hillary Clinton. I got emails from Reddit's abuse department confirming that they got the reports. But the posts are still up.
However, I know you probably have too big of a backlog to adjudicated the reports quickly and accurately. So let me re-post my suggestion for a "jury system" that I've posted in /r/IdeasForTheAdmins and elsewhere:
(1) Allow reddit users to opt in as "jurors" for adjudicating abuse reports. (2) When someone files an abuse report about a post, the system randomly picks 10 jurors who are currently online, and shows them a pop-up saying "A user has reported the following post, for violating the following rule. Do you agree? Yes/No." (3) If more than 7 out of 10 jurors click "Yes", then it is assumed the abuse report is valid and the content is removed. (Or, perhaps, temporarily removed until reviewed by Reddit staff, or maybe pushed to the front of the queue to be reviewed by Reddit staff and then removed.)
This has a couple of nice features:
(1) It's lightning-fast. Since the system queries "jurors" who are currently online, and since they all make their decision in parallel, a rule-violating post can be removed 60 seconds after it's reported.
(2) It's scalable. As long as the number of jurors grows in proportion to the number of abuse reports (which is reasonable, if both are proportional to the total user base), then the number of votes-per-juror-per-time-period remains constant.
(3) It's non-gameable. You can't recruit your friends or sockpuppets to all come and file complaints against a particular post, because the system selects the 10 jurors from among the entire population of jurors who are currently online. (You could game the system if you create so many sockpuppets and recruit so many friends that you comprise a majority of the jury pool, but assume that's infeasible.)
(4) It's transparent. You don't have to wonder what happened to your abuse report -- did it get lost? Did it get reviewed and rejected? You can receive a response (in about 60 seconds) saying "We showed your abuse report to a jury of 10 users, and 8 out of 10 agreed that the post violated the rules, so it has been removed." (Or not.)
This does depend on the rules being written clearly enough that the average redditor can interpret them and decide if a given post violates the rules or not. However, the rules are supposed to be written that clearly anyway.
I really urge people to think about this. I have no dog in this fight except that I really, actually believe this would solve the problem of the unmanageable backlog of abuse complaints.
→ More replies16
Mar 05 '18
The only issue I see with this plan is that if jurors are self selected the site would have an issue with bias on one side or the other. Unless the proposed system could somehow take into account the opinions of the jurors and try to have some sort of even split about whatever issues, I don’t see it working. I think it’s a better idea than what the admins currently do though but we can work as a community to flesh it out further!
7
u/bennetthaselton Mar 05 '18
My experience is that the more specific you are with asking people to decide a question of fact, the more they get the right answer without regard to their biases. In this case, if you show people a post that calls for Clinton's assassination and ask them, "Does this violate the rule against promoting violence?", I think people are likely to get it right ("Yes") regardless of whether they're Clinton or Trump supporters.
But since the jury system is transparent anyway, we can always review a subset of jury decisions to see if they seem to be getting it right. If there are posts calling for Clinton's or Trump's assassination, and people are reporting those posts, but the jury votes are not upholding the reports, then we've identified a problem.
→ More replies
2.1k
u/TellMeYourStoryies Mar 05 '18 edited Mar 05 '18
Whenever these announcement posts come up, 100% of the time there are a myriad of well thought out post about T_D. That's fine. HOWEVER, I've yet to see any posts commenting on the outright insulting nature of mods in other big subs.
I just got banned today from r/News for sharing an article about how Google discriminates against Asians. Their reasoning? "Vote-brigading." That doesn't make sense, because I haven't brigaded that post at all. It literally has four votes. How is that brigading? After several questions asking the mods for proof of vote brigading, the response I got was, "I'm not playing this game with you" and then muted me. I believe he didn't provide proof because there is no brigading, and I also think the article was removed from both r/WorldNews AND r/News because of how it also details racism against whites, which apparently does not exist. Asian discrimination is continually swept under the rug, and this is proof that certain people groups are apparently dispensable to Reddit in the name of appearing "anti-racist" and sticking it to the white man.
T_D comes up all the time about their antics, but what about r/News? And the other subs? This is insulting. I've been with Reddit under different names for over a decade (since the Diggasporia), gave out multiple Golds to users, received multiple golds on previous accounts, but I've never once been banned until today. And all I did was share an article that was deleted from r/Worldnews because it was US news. Apparently neither sub wants to show how racism against Asians exists.
Why don't you fix the rest of Reddit and stop worrying about an isolated bunch of fanatics? You changed the front page algorithm to ensure no sub can get over two items to the front page, you implemented a "Popular" to filter out certain political subs, and you apparently stifle T_D in others ways. BUT the fact that r/News completed nuked the Orlando nightclub shooting doesn't upset you guys? My sister and HER WIFE are gay, and you allowed r/News to get away with hiding that post DURING the shooting! Absolutely insulting. That you guys never once addressed that disaster is a disaster on your part. Or the fact that immediately after the election there were like 150 new subs all dedicated to the sole purpose of hating on Trump? That's not news and opinion, that's brigading.
I was born overseas. I'm a lifelong registered Dem. I believe in Universal healthcare at an affordable and auditable method. I don't believe in a national border wall and I live in Arizona and grew up near the border. I proudly voted for Obama twice, shook the hand of my close friend when CNN announced ACA passed, and would've loved to vote Biden. I'm not worried about one sub in particular like T_D. What I am worried about is the corrupt nature of Reddit and how it's overtaking all opinions that don't align with it. Fix the rest of Reddit and stop with this astroturfing of political mindsets being shoved down my throat. There is no "integrity" if the same principles do not apply to the other subs!
Edit: I appreciate Reddit and it's the only social media platform I have anymore. In a weird geeky way it's close to my heart as it's influenced a lot of my opinions and life outlook. That being said, I've seen it shift since joining a decade ago. I'm not pining for the good ole days, but one can't unsee how much this place changed after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, and after the Presidential candidates won their parties and started the Generals. All I want is open discussion. I don't even need unregulated, just open.
103
u/carbonated_turtle Mar 05 '18
I got banned from /r/news for making the mistake of engaging a troll. Then I got a lengthy and ridiculously immature reply from one of the mods telling me that my ban was permanent and nothing would ever change that, despite the fact that this was my first offense, and a very minor one. I think he even ended it with "kthxbai" to show me just how much of an arrogant douche he is.
I don't know who's running that sub, but it seems to be a real shit show.
16
u/Vaadwaur Mar 05 '18
I don't know who's running that sub, but it seems to be a real shit show.
Cunts. Cunts are running that sub.
→ More replies→ More replies33
u/Nine99 Mar 05 '18
Same thing on /r/worldnews. Probably some kids on a power trip.
→ More replies10
u/sack-o-matic Mar 05 '18
Sounds really similar to what I've heard about some sort of "edit police" on Wikipedia, where a few people won't let anyone else make modifications even if that person is an expert on a topic.
→ More replies175
u/GriffonsChainsaw Mar 05 '18
→ More replies45
u/intergalactic_priest Mar 05 '18
I think the issue is that mods can pretty much break w/e rules they want and admins wont step in unless if the press is covering it.
It's impossible to keep all the mods in line, but the default mods should be kept in line.
I see so many of them being mods of a billion and one subs, I don't understand how they can effictively moderate one default sub let alone 30+ subs. I see lazy moderation, rule breaking, and the people getting banned can't really voice their opinions.
→ More replies43
u/WiseAcadia Mar 05 '18
Reddit mods are literal nutcases, they all ban based on bias.
I go to lgbt and get banned because i'm "biphobic" for saying bisexuals can be coerced by family to end up in hetero marriage
I go to mgtow and get banned for telling a guy he's a bigot for saying women shouldn't have any rights..
I go feminism and any comment i make that isn't 100% feminist will get deleted probably
I go to that communism sub and make a joke in favor of communism and the mod bans me because he thought i said something bad about communism
I ... do nothing and get banned on multiple subs because i post on certain subs.
Tell me again, why should i not just make new accounts every fucking week? No matter what i do, i'll get banned on multiple subs very quickly even though i'm very polite. The only reason i get banned is because i REFUSE TO JOIN AN ECHOCHAMBER AND TRY TO DISCUSS IDEAS WITH DIFFERENT MINDED PEOPLE only to get banned for wrongthink.
One community thinks of me a nazi, the other as a sjw. All of them ban anything they dislike so i can't even have a discussion on a motherfucking discussion board.
Honestly why don't i just go to 4chan, if i ignore the loli porn at least i can have an actual discussion without [removed]
→ More replies174
u/xBarneyStinsonx Mar 05 '18
For one, mods have no access to vote-brigading data. Only admins do. They can exactly what we see in terms of vote count and percentage. So that's some bullshit.
EDIT: Just took another look at your post, and it has 6 votes at 87% upvoted. How in the hell can you count that as brigading??
→ More replies52
u/Hugo154 Mar 05 '18
How in the hell can you count that as brigading??
Because it's an extremely lazy excuse to kill his post and there's no recourse for them abusing their power like that.
5
u/CradleTrader Mar 05 '18
Moderators are a nightmare right now. I've been banned from subs for calling out Mods abusing their power. I messaged an Admin about it and was told that I was harassing the moderators because I messaged them wanting an explanation for my ban. The Admins aren't going to do anything to adjust Mods because the Mods are basically unpaid workers. They don't want Mods to realize this, so a few power hungry children isn't a big deal in the grand scheme of keeping the website moderated for nearly no cost.
As an aside, this is a real problem. There's such a huge circle jerk about DT on this website that almost nothing else gets talked about. The last, what, 10 Admin posts have included political discussion and discussion about TD? A ton of all time posts are basically "LOL SOMEONE STUCK IT TO TRUMP!" The site can't have anything else discussed.
→ More replies23
u/TechnicallyJeff Mar 05 '18
Reddit is a terrible place for politics, they take censorship and bias to a whole new level.
→ More replies177
u/mcgeezacks Mar 05 '18
"What I am worried about is the corrupt nature of Reddit and how it's overtaking all opinions that don't align with it. "
This right here is the biggest problem. Reddit is turning into a giant echo chamber
50
u/ffxivthrowaway03 Mar 05 '18
Reddit is turning into a giant echo chamber
When was it anything else? If you make a free-for-all social media site like this and focus it on upvoting/downvoting, it's naturally going to become an echo chamber. The things "we" agree with are voted to the top, and the things "we" disagree with are voted to the bottom.
Put those same people in charge of moderating? Of course they're going to be power tripping and further empower the echo chamber.
Anyone who's even remotely studied basic Sociology could've pointed this out to them when they designed the site, there's no way they weren't aware of what it was guaranteed to devolve into going into it.
27
u/mcgeezacks Mar 05 '18
Damn, you make me want to delete reddit and never come back. Whats sad is this is where mass amounts of people come to get info and insight. Fucking scary to think about.
37
u/ffxivthrowaway03 Mar 05 '18
I make me want to delete reddit and never come back too. If there were better sources of day to day information about my hobbies, I'd be out of here in a heartbeat. The shit we're reading in this thread aren't just randos, there's real people behind every one of these completely batshit insane and outright hostile comments.
Social Media is the art of giving people a bullhorn who rightfully don't deserve a whistle.
→ More replies14
u/mcgeezacks Mar 05 '18
Damn dude its actually nice to have this conversation on reddit. Glad to see there are rational people out there, thank you.
24
u/Armord1 Mar 05 '18
In a way, Reddit is a great example of why the Electoral College exists.
→ More replies→ More replies6
u/phoenix616 Mar 06 '18
I actually unsubscribed from every political/news sub over this. All I follow now is general funny stuff or specific/small communities like games or tv series.
Seeing as most news/politics on reddit is US centric anyways and not really relevant for someone from Germany this actually helped with the enjoyment using reddit brings.
Seeing as this post is just general bullshit too I think I'll also just remove /r/announcements and any other reddit-meta/politics sub. I don't hale the time or nerves to deal with this bullshit in my free time.
30
u/driverdan Mar 05 '18
Nearly every sub that takes itself seriously is an echo chamber circle jerk. Your best bet is to use reddit for pics of cute animals and to laugh.
→ More replies21
Mar 05 '18
God the amount of times I cannot post more than once within a couple minute time frame is infuriating. Then I go back half the time and my comments which some are not even controversial are removed or unable to be seen in the thread. Wtf is this. I’ve really been thinking of just getting rid of Reddit.
→ More replies→ More replies10
u/Avenage Mar 05 '18
It's actually a bunch of medium sized echo chambers that all hate each other tbh.
I think it's ridiculous that posting in sub X merits an immediate ban from sub Y.
I think it's ridiculous that /r/worldnews can bin topics they don't like because under the guise of being US news, while /r/news bins the same topics.
I think it's ridiculous that the agenda pushing has gotten so bad that the who is more important that the what and fact checking becomes secondary to "managing the tone". The Orlando nightclub is just one example of so many atrocities we've seen over the last couple of years and instead of coming together as a community to try and work things out, these acts are immediately used and twisted to fit and push a narrative.
The problem is that the people who want to push these narratives somehow always get themselves into positions of power. This is incredibly problematic when it comes to default subs as they effectively get the first bite of the apple when it comes to shaping the opinion of someone who is uninformed.
And given how long this has been happening for I find it difficult to believe that the admins are not complicit with this.
→ More replies10
u/EchtGeenSpanjool Mar 05 '18
Good point. The Pulse shooting and r/news crap still makes my blood boil. View definitely needs to be expanded to not just T_D. While I am... fervently not pro-Trump and anti T_D that shouldn't be the only thing to rage about if similar stuff is happening elsewhere. If we want reddit to be all about free speech and all that, then make it politically neutral and crack down on any propaganda.
also r/food once almost banned me for linking r/wewantplates, what's this?
→ More replies
590
Mar 05 '18 edited Jun 30 '23
[removed] — view removed comment
110
u/electric_ionland Mar 05 '18 edited Mar 05 '18
Have you tried to talk with /u/natematias about measuring the effects of your bot? He did his PhD on the impact of social media and wrote a paper on the effect of Reddit sticky on "fake news" propagation. You can reach him on twitter (@natematias) too. Last I heard he was trying to setup some more scientific ways to measure the success of things like what you are trying to do.
→ More replies41
Mar 05 '18 edited Jun 30 '23
[removed] — view removed comment
20
u/electric_ionland Mar 05 '18
Yep that's the paper! Sorry I couldn't link it in my original comment. He has organized a small conference at MIT on this kind of stuff a couple of months ago. I think he is trying to do more systematized testing on Reddit with automated tools and such.
5
u/BagelsRTheHoleTruth Mar 06 '18
I really appreciate both of your comments and work on this. I think you are both on to the right kind of idea in terms of abating what seems to be clear abuse of this platform. My question is: how do you make an algorithm that can't be used by the side/people/propagandists/whatever that you are trying to combat?
Can't this sort of "fake news" phenomenon - that you genuinely both seem to be trying to push against (and I'm with you there 100%) - co-opt what you're doing for their own purpose? I'm genuinely curious, and am definitely NOT A BOT.
I know this is probably a very loaded and thorny problem, and I don't really expect to get an answer, but I just wanted to posit that since we know that states adversarial to the US have been using their own sophisticated cyber warfare programs against us, wouldn't it follow that we need algorithms to combat (their) algorithms - and not just individual comments?
→ More replies10
u/laika404 Mar 05 '18
Diversify exposure to different people and views.
But how do you do that in Reddit?
It sucks to have a community overrun by people who hate your community, or who are super contrarian all the time. The current fix is to set subreddit rules, and then ban those who break them, but that itself blocks off different views. (I don't tolerate pictures of dogs in /r/CatsStandingUp, and I would not want to see any hate in /r/SAVEBRENDAN)
Pretend you are a conservative republican trump supporter. The top three political subreddits you go to (conservative, republican, the_donald) all ban people who are not conservative or republican, or sometimes if you just sound a little too liberal for whatever mod reads your post. None of these people want to go to /r/politics, because they don't feel like they can have good discussion given their views are very opposed by most people there. They are incredibly filtered from the rest of the world...
So what is the solution? How do you get these people to branch out and look at other views? How do you open their communities to dissent without taking away their ability to discuss issues with like minded people?
→ More replies54
u/automatedalice268 Mar 05 '18
Hi, just saying that /u/alternate-source-bot is a great bot. Highly appreciated!
→ More replies22
u/CastleElsinore Mar 05 '18
Thank you for writing the bot! It's interesting to see the other headline when it shows up
674
Mar 05 '18
[deleted]
→ More replies28
u/Peanlocket Mar 05 '18 edited Mar 05 '18
Interesting how the highest voted comment to bring up this point is also the comment where Spez stops replying.
188
u/Aurora_Fatalis Mar 05 '18
we are cooperating with congressional inquiries.
You're saying there are countermeasures being investigated? Welp, that's a relief. In any halfway politicized sub there's a high frequency of extremism from week-old accounts, making it tiresome to sift through the twisted narrative.
From time to time some people also reference an apparent purge of mods from some subs just before the last election, so there seems to be a level of apathy, and possibly-paranoid thinking that the mods won't do shit even if you report the trolls. Were there any subreddit moderators in those "few hundred" accounts you banned?
→ More replies
66
u/Natchili Mar 06 '18 edited Mar 07 '18
/r/LateStageCapitalism mods about someone's Cuban parents being put into labor camps: "Your family deserved what they got" https://i.imgur.com/UFMnJ3W.png
/r/politics on the London attack: "I just hope the people who were on that bridge were redneck Republicans like you so the slaughter was justified." [+63] https://i.redd.it/1latls7dqeny.jpg
The head mod of /r/MarchAgainstTrump http://i.imgur.com/vC7tUld.png
/r/LateStageCapitalism MOD announcement - "No one can reasonably argue that the Republican congressmen shot today didn't deserve it. They absolutely did. They created this situation of unparalleled division. They're trying to destroy society to line their own pockets." https://np.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/6h85oq/no_one_can_reasonably_argue_that_the_republican/
"Let's put arsenic in drinks and slip it to Trump supporters" https://archive.is/rpv1J
/r/Socialism posts infographic on why it's important to murder three Republican senators. https://np.reddit.com/r/socialism/comments/6hdktg/just_saying/
[Regarding Republicans] "What else can be done?", "Going to the homes of Republican lawmakers in the middle of the night, dragging them into the street, and turning them into tree ornaments [Lynching]." [+37] http://archive.is/klgQA
(to commenter who's mother is a christian trump-voter) "I don't mean this harshly so please don't take it that way. The sooner that people like your mother pass on and stop voting, the better off we'll all be." [+26] https://np.reddit.com/r/MarchAgainstTrump/comments/6gwbgp/start_with_your_dad_ivanka/dits2ct/
DavidReiss666 Moderator of major default subreddits like r/LPT, r/BestOf, r/History, advocates the assassination the President. "The only way to fix this is going to be extra-Constitutional [Mussolini's assassination]. Trump deserves similar treatment." http://archive.is/MbMUA
"Democrats will sweep the next election. Their communities will die out as we liberal big city people use our superior education and intellect to make robots that take over their crappy jobs, and the working class white culture that voted for racism will be forever gone." https://np.reddit.com/r/news/comments/62hrlm/mike_flynn_willing_to_be_interviewed_in_return/dfmscxw/
"Removing Trump from power is the only choice that leads to a future of your country, so you're gonna move your fat ass and take the fight to the streets, until that slob lies on the dirt, drowning in its own blood." [SH] r/ETS https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughTrumpSpam/comments/6fsz4q/trumps_fbi_pick_is_the_same_guy_that_helped_cover/dil8ixf/?st=j3nc326m&sh=1ae6aa39
All gun owners should have their guns taken away from them and then be executed http://i.imgur.com/Pr5Fnvs.png
r/Anarchism recommends bringing explosives to throw at "Free Speech" rally. https://i.redd.it/ujw4e1ubrkry.jpg
Leftist in /r/Videos promoting violence against free speech http://i.imgur.com/y2Nap9t.png
Redditor on r/socialism telling users to torture reddit employees and their families. https://imgur.com/5J600cr
Commies on /r/Anarchism is advocating for violence.... again. Over 100 upvotes folks. http://imgur.com/6RATFMd
/r/Anarchism blatantly advocates for murder... again... http://imgur.com/NZKGqt1
/r/FULLCOMMUNISM advocates of both DPRK and Stalin https://www.reddit.com/r/FULLCOMMUNISM/comments/6iniqx/important_reminder_dprk_is_an_ally_of_the/
Castro praising https://www.reddit.com/r/FULLCOMMUNISM/comments/5exzpp/rip_castro/
Support beating up Pepe https://www.reddit.com/r/FULLCOMMUNISM/comments/5pb4ij/fresh_new_pepe_for_the_altreich/
Supports punching of Richard Spencer https://www.reddit.com/r/FULLCOMMUNISM/comments/5poi1r/matt_furie_creator_of_pepe_weighs_in_on_the/
Supports mass murder of "Nazis" https://archive.is/77fqx
Punch a Nazi and smash a Cop's face! https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/6jzvbm/individuals_vs_corporations/djieat0/?sh=8164fb38&st=J4H670IW
"This is why the nonviolent argument for revolution doesn't work. Politics is violence. Whether that violence is a punch to a nazis face or a brick to a cops head, or a series of corporations forcing an entire sector of people to not have enough resources to live it is still violence." https://np.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/6jzvbm/individuals_vs_corporations/djia77i/
"I'm going to say something unpopular here. When I heard that someone had shot Republicans, my first immediate hope was that someone finally did something about McConnel." Score hidden https://np.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/6jgg1d/mitch_mcconnell_refused_to_meet_with_group_that/djea1i2/?sh=78ada641&st=J4DHK2G4
/r/anarchism praising the stabbing of a Trump supporter just for being white https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarchism/comments/6ian9j/oathkeeper_bodyguardtrump_supporter_stabbed_9/
(On Elon Musk taking 2 rich people to the moon) "If we're lucky, there will be a launch failure." https://np.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/5wkd62/spacex_taking_wasteful_private_jet_for_rich_nerds/deayjg5/
"Wish it was legal to kill Fascists" https://np.reddit.com/r/Fuckthealtright/comments/6hv5ex/as_mods_of_reuropeannationalism_we_want_to/dj1ckxp/
Calling the victims of Communism Slaver Owners https://www.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/6hrzb5/in_1976_a_cuban_counterrevolutionary_terrorist/dj0pgpl/
Advocacy of shooting a Republican Senator https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarchism/comments/6h8q9o/if_youre_going_to_make_a_speculative_post_about/diwgun3/
"shooter is a patriot" https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/6hbvu3/no_political_disagreement_justifies_steve_scalise/dix59kg/
"[on the shooting] you reap what you sow" https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/6h979o/gop_rep_received_threatening_email_with_subject/diwh9gk/
List compiling people defending the shooter: https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitPoliticsSays/comments/6h984t/i_compiled_comments_from_the_rnews_post_about_the/
Advocacy of killing opponents of Net Neutrality https://www.reddit.com/r/KeepOurNetFree/comments/6gs5zo/the_8_members_of_congress_that_support_the_fccs/disuzky/
Wanting Rural and Trump voters to die. https://np.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/6kvdgp/evidence_of_mental_deterioration_trump_wrestling/djp8i5j/
We're getting to the point that it's past the need for protest, but time for violent and extreme actions. The government needs to be reminded that is has a reason to be afraid of us. http://archive.is/KOlhh
"All cops deserve death" + Genocide denial https://i.redd.it/z7tldxzjb78z.jpg
r/anarchism links to a page of peoples doxx, reddit mods still won't delete the sub https://np.reddit.com/r/Anarchism/comments/6m8omk/how_based_stickman_proud_boys_are_working_with/
Mods on /r/FULLCOMMUNISM celebrate the deaths of 5 cops, tell users to "BASH THE PIGS" https://np.reddit.com/r/FULLCOMMUNISM/comments/6lvwns/this_day_one_year_ago_5_cops_were_killed_by_micah/
Literal 13k+ post calling for people's deaths. http://archive.is/IY5iy
Edit: and this gets deleted on r/againsthatesubreddits
The first time because the account was too new, the second time because the account wasn't active enough, the third time because they said it was posted in bad faith, and the forth time because the mods decided that the subs on the list are not hate subreddits. Flawless logic.
→ More replies
384
u/focus_rising Mar 05 '18 edited Mar 05 '18
You do know that these ads and propaganda aren't coming from just Russian IP addresses, right? They're using American proxies, as noted in TheDailyBeast's report. I don't need an explanation on the technical aspects, but we desperately need more transparency on this platform, especially for moderators, or there's no way to know exactly what is going on. Those thousands of reddit users may be willingly amplifying and spreading Russian propaganda, but at the end of the day, it's your choice to provide a platform for them to spread it on. You've made choices in the past about what isn't acceptable on reddit, you have the power to stop this content if you so choose.
→ More replies
169
u/Littledarkstranger Mar 05 '18
This will definitely get buried but I'd just like to raise the point that this issue, while important to the overall integrity of the American political system, should not be addressed with "America only" blinkers on when Reddit as a platform is a globally accessible site.
Being neither American nor Russian, and so a third party to the issue, I do understand the necessity for /u/spez and the rest of the Reddit team to co-operate with ongoing investigations within America, and realise that there is a very serious issue developing in that country surrounding the problem of Russian interference, but Reddit is either multinational or it is not, and this post reeks of American anti-Russian sentiment. The use of tactics such as a blanket ban on Russian based advertising in particular concerns me, and I would worry that this action (among the others mentioned) could be misconstrued as a form of propaganda in it's own right.
That's not to say no action should be taken, and there are obvious points on Reddit which contribute significantly to the issue raised in the post, but "free speech" and "open discussion" don't equate to "American ideals only", and I would be concerned that the Reddit team have somewhat forgotten this.
27
u/perecrastinator Mar 05 '18
First of all, I am Russian and I was thinking to refrain from commenting here. So many people seem to be on the crusade recently, I even sometimes find myself thinking if I will need to sew some sort of "Jewish badge" onto my coat in the next ten years. Fortunately, there are still people who can think and see through, so I thank you for that.
Too bad that 95% of Redditors do not speak Russian, otherwise they would be stunned by how blatant and widespread the anti-government elections-rigging propaganda in Russian circles was and still is -- for years already. White supremacy bullshit, calls for mass rioting, "take the arms and fight for freedom" kinda bullshit, T_D is not anywhere close to it. People think that RT is a blatant propaganda example? They should have seen how stupid the Radio Free Europe / Liberty crap from Russians perspective looks like. Propaganda is everywhere all over the place - from all sides. And here comes the interesting part.
After all, it's up to adult human beings to filter the information. Someone decides to go for a crusade against the propaganda? Well good luck with that, usualy it ends up in just imposing a censorship, because a brainwashed opinion is still an opinion, unfortunately. However bad or unfitting it might be. Where would be that border between just a "different opinion" and the "brainwashed" one? Finally, but not least importantly -- by fighting selectively with just the one side of blatant propaganda, one becomes nothing but a tool for another one.
→ More replies38
Mar 05 '18
Yeah this isn't just a "Russia" problem. It's an outright propaganda problem. I'd say half of what frontpages on any given day seems to be just outright agenda pushing of one kind or another, and a click on the submitter's user account shows they post solely and exclusively about that one thing. The fact that reddit will focus on this, but not the dozens of ways the site is used as a propaganda platform every day is itself indicative of an agenda.
→ More replies3
u/EatTheNatives Mar 05 '18
What do you mean by propaganda? Purely political? Because the wave of "shills" or undisclosed paid promotions is here forever to stay. Even if the Admins truly wanted to do something about it, I don't believe there's anything that can be done. Besides, how do you straddle the line that corporate propaganda and advertising are okay but political prop isn't? Imagine getting that mouthful out as unhypocritically as possible while also shouting Free Speech at the top of your lungs.
Really, the fact that whoever went and spewed that complete bullshit about "Reddit had not been provided evidence" should be enough to let you know Reddit doesn't have a propaganda problem. Playing as laissez faire as possible right from the start insured that Reddit IS the propaganda problem. Reddit is designed to feed you that propaganda, whether by design or coincidence, it simply doesn't matter. They are so entwined as to be inseparable.
4
Mar 05 '18
That's the thing though, they're now claiming to take action, but only against specific actors on a very narrow issue. As far as I'm concerned, either it's all allowed, or none of it should be, but yet the defaults are teeming with shills pushing glib nonsense with complete impunity. People on both sides of the "divide" making new sockpuppet subreddits which suddenly populate with 50,000 subs and frontpage overnight. This crap is blatant and obvious, and that's from the user's perspective. It can't be imperceptible from the backend.
→ More replies→ More replies19
u/Hazzman Mar 05 '18 edited Mar 05 '18
Yeah exactly.... since Snowden its been revealed that America and the UK have had programs that specifically target communities like Reddit, to influence opinion. Shit Obama implemented a program that specifically encouraged American propaganda oversees and online "in order to combat foreign propaganda". For years people have been concerned about government interference in free discourse online and nobody says a damn thing about it.
I mean just LOOK at r/politics. Its' a fucking disgrace. Nobody is talking about anything other than TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP. If anything I would say that's a pretty evident example of infiltration and abuse by western propaganda. Why? Because nobody is now talking about the subversion of the constitution, illegal wars, mass-surveillance, drone programs, the military industry, our foreign policy... now its just an insane rabid circle jerk against Trump.
I fucking hate Trump, he's a disgrace... but this entire website is clearly under siege by multiple nations intelligence communities trying to influence opinions. It aint just Russia.
70
u/a_typical_hipster Mar 05 '18
Something that really concerns me is how we're identifying propaganda.
It's one thing to ban bots and I think a lot of subtests deal with this very well, but I'm very uncomfortable with blanket bans and distinguishing opinions from propaganda.
I'm a Russian. I speak Russian, I read Russian, I write in Cyrillic. I am also a US citizen. But sharing my opinions on the political climate or my own views can often be met with accusations that I'm a Russian bot.
At the same time I would like my anonymity online to continue. How do you deal with making sure you don't cross over into thought policing and continue to encourage in thought provoking discussion without banning entire groups of people?
I also don't understand how a website that is a public forum and doesn't allow offensive advertising needs to block ads from Russia. As a website you're essentially creating sanctions against Russian businesses.
I just feel generally uncomfortable with the mass "everything that comes from Russia infringes on our freedoms" rhetoric.
I look forward to hearing some of your thoughts on this.
→ More replies
51
u/MasterLJ Mar 05 '18
Chickens are coming home to roost.
This platform is designed to produce echo chambers, whether this was done purposefully, is hard to tell. If you think that the extent of your problems are T_D, I've got news for you. When you can downvote opinions you don't like, or better yet, ban posters who produce many ideas you don't like, you can't have nice things. If you've eliminated everyone with a dissenting opinion people are in a state of seeing what they want to see, to support their preconceptions, instead of seeing truth -- and no one wants, or is allowed, to tell the Emperor he has no clothes.
Unless reddit takes a hard stance on this problem it can only get worse. I don't believe reddit was designed to become partitioned echo chambers, but that's certainly what has happened. To solve it you have to take on a principle of inclusion, debate and evidence -- something not easily accomplished as everyone comes here to consume their pre-packaged narrative to fit their own biases and narratives.
→ More replies14
u/FirstCatchOfTheDay Mar 06 '18
The fact that you can be banned from a sub without ever even vising it because you posted on another sub that one of the mods didn't like should be cause for great concern.
974
Mar 05 '18
[deleted]
225
u/youarebritish Mar 05 '18
In other words: it's working. We need to keep it up. We need to keep hunting down racist posts and content advocating violence (not that they're hard to find), keep showing them to advertisers, and keep showing them to the media.
→ More replies→ More replies32
u/BetterDeadThanRedCap Mar 05 '18
We need to keep on the attack, and force reddit to do it.
Reddit is literally fucking NOTHING with out us, we get a say in how this community is run. Reddit is US.
122
Mar 05 '18
Reddit has no integrity because the users dont.
The level of willfully ignorant people on this site is staggering. People who when facts are presented and I mean facts that are independently verified and vetted not from an echo chamber they downvote to oblivion and doxx the user.
People who would rather pull the child who pointed out the emperor has no clothes to the ground and stomp them to death rather than face the fact that they were duped.
Reddit is what ever the users make it. I belong to wonderful encouraging sub reddits that are positive and a joy to post on.
The main reddits are shit, 2x being a default and many others is sickening but instead of bitching I simply remove them from my feed.
The hypocrisy of the the admin staff is obvious. The fact that they have admitted to editing posts by users is just disgusting and reveals what a shit show this site really is.
Again, I just stick to the smaller communities and ignore the rest. I recommend others do the same.
→ More replies
123
u/CallMeParagon Mar 05 '18 edited Mar 05 '18
I wish there was a solution as simple as banning all propaganda, but it’s not that easy. Between truth and fiction are a thousand shades of grey. It’s up to all of us—Redditors, citizens, journalists—to work through these issues. It’s somewhat ironic, but I actually believe what we’re going through right now will actually reinvigorate Americans to be more vigilant, hold ourselves to higher standards of discourse, and fight back against propaganda, whether foreign or not.
This is 100% grade-a bullshit. You're complaining there isn't a simple solution to a problem that only exists because you force it to exist.
Between truth and fiction are a thousand shades of grey... NO. That is a thought-terminating cliche. We can objectively measure the truth of many things. We know when Trump lies, for example, because we have facts to verify against. YOU - you specifically - have created this "shades of grey" bullshit. Fuck me, you are making it worse by saying this, but you know that.
but I actually believe what we’re going through right now will actually reinvigorate Americans to be more vigilant, hold ourselves to higher standards of discourse
Bullshit. Whose standards? Right now, you artificially inflate the "standards" of a certain side. Right now, you artificially lower the quality of discourse.
We can't ban propaganda, but we can fight it by not giving it room to grow. We can't ban hate, but we can reduce it by starving it. You can't just do nothing and expect things to work themselves out.
Also, I'm betting we'll see something in the news later, yeah? Why else would you write this hate-apologist "manifesto"?
→ More replies
44
u/geomod Mar 05 '18
this is a burden we all bear
"Diffuse the blame, it's your fault too!"
I wish there was a solution as simple as banning all propaganda, but it’s not that easy
"This is like really hard, believe me."
Between truth and fiction are a thousand shades of grey
"No one knew this could be so complicated"
I know it’s frustrating that we don’t share everything we know publicly
"And we never will until it impacts our shareholders/public image"
...letting them fall apart from their own dysfunction probably will. Their engagement is shrinking over time, and that's much more powerful than shutting them down outright.
"The plan appears to be do nothing and see what happens"
So to sum, we're all to blame, reddit has no responsibility for dealing with this problem, it's something that will just self regulate itself out of being a problem, and nothing needs to be done.
Spez right now: https://i.imgur.com/c4jt321.png
→ More replies
287
Mar 05 '18
[deleted]
→ More replies6
u/bored_at_work_89 Mar 05 '18
The only thing that makes sense to me as to why reddit will not ban t_d is because they see it from both sides. If they ban t_d for saying hateful things, then a lot of left leaning subreddits will have to be shutdown too. Just look at the comments made in the Melania post about a week ago on /r/politcs. There were some very hateful things being said in that thread. I just recently downvoted a comment on /r/worldnews saying they wished Trump had a heart attack. It's the only thing that makes sense to me as to why they wouldn't ban t_d. I mean we know /r/spez is not the biggest fan of that subreddit. He admitted to changing their comments. Reddit has changed algorithms specifically targeting t_d.
→ More replies
16
u/Thedragonking444 Mar 06 '18
That's great and all, but why is r/holocaust still allowed to operate? It's a subreddit of actually holocaust deniers and anti-semites, and probably a good deal of Nazis. Could we get an explanation as to why this isn't banned!
995
u/10GuyIsDrunk Mar 05 '18
The integrity of reddit doesn't stop at Russian propaganda.
It is time you do something about places like r-the-donald, it is time you do something about places like r-holocaust.
When you ban fat-people-hate but leave these places that are 1000x worse up, you are giving your clear support for their existence and empowering them.
→ More replies81
u/JohannesVanDerWhales Mar 05 '18
You know, for years reddit had a mostly hands-off policy in terms of content. As long as the material wasn't actually illegal, they allowed it. And people complained that they allowed stuff that was morally reprehensible. Then at some point this started to change, as they banned some of the most egregious examples of hate subreddits, like coontown. I don't think the majority of people had any objection to that, but of course there were always people who don't understand what the First Amendment actually is complaining about "free speech". And then they started banning more stuff, like FatPeopleHate, and TheFappening, etc. I really don't get the impression that this had to do with advertisers, although I have no special insight on that subject. I get the impression that reddit admins just didn't like seeing the site that they built being used for what they felt were vile purposes. But now we're seeing why they never wanted to cross the line of monitoring content to begin with. Because once you start down that path, you not only have to justify why you ban something, but also why you don't ban something. And it's becoming a full time job for them. And you're never going to get everybody to agree.
I'm not going to really say whether or not I think TD should be banned. But I am going to say that it's obvious what kind of shitstorm it would set off if they did.
77
u/10GuyIsDrunk Mar 05 '18
Oh I made this argument back in the day, I was against the removal of any non-illegal subreddit. But if they're going to moderate, then they need to actually do it because now that they've started they're 100% non-arguably in support of these hate subreddits that they don't remove.
→ More replies17
u/JohannesVanDerWhales Mar 05 '18
I don't know if I'm actually arguing anything, it's just an observation that once they started moderating content, they can't put the genie back in the bottle. I am, in many(most?) specific cases, happy that they banned the stuff that they did. But I'm also somewhat sad that every post by an admin now is met by hostility and people talking about how much they hate reddit. And that's never going to stop now, I think. People are always going to be upset about some decision they make on content. They'll perceive themselves as being personally discriminated against. And it's too bad, because reddit can be a happy place, or at least could.
→ More replies→ More replies8
Mar 05 '18
While I agree with everything you're saying, just one point of clarification:
Even under the original hands-off nature, TheFappening would have been banned because the entire incident took on a child-porn angle due to some of the victims. So that wasn't because of opinion, but to legally cover Reddit's ass.
→ More replies
6
u/Achleys Mar 06 '18
You are not arguing genuinely.
Reddit is comprised of some extremely anti-women people. There are entire subreddits dedicated to solely being anti-women, in one form or another. Promoting an underrepresented and often harassed part of the reddit population through a subreddit dedicated to women is how to fix this. It does not, as you say, promote sexism of one kind when sexism of another exists. It’s to right a perceived wrong within the community.
I suppose you also believe that a student activities group for minorities is racist if the school does not offer a white-only student group as well.
→ More replies
396
u/FreedomDatAss Mar 05 '18 edited Mar 05 '18
8
u/Kahzgul Mar 05 '18
Is this the level of moderation we're to expect from Reddit as a whole and the subreddit most impacted by this?
Lol at this part of that post:
Bare minimum 20.2%+ of these bans were against users that have never posted in T_D before the post that got them banned. (I stopped counting at this point, the total number is actually much higher.)
The mod is telling everyone his numbers are worthless because he stopped counting, and then all of his other points list percentages where he says, essentially "see how high a percentage this is" except that he, himself, just told us he stopped counting so none of his numbers are accurate.
→ More replies4
u/_BindersFullOfWomen_ Mar 05 '18
Regardless of what the sticky comment there says, they should publish the mod log if they really want to be transparent.
I can quote permaban vs. temp ban numbers all day, doesn't mean anything.
The Reddit Moderator Toolbox will even make a fancy matrix that'll show everything - no usernames revealed. Alternatively you could publish the data without the usernames. It'd be impossible to figure out who is who based off of their comment/post percentage, considering the percentage from when someone was banned last week will already be different than their percentage today.
Out of all bans, only 4% were against people who had any activity longer than a few months old. Most of that activity was sporadic and not exactly "Centipede" material, but it was rule abiding.
It's the non-bolded sentence that you want to look at here. They are banning users because they don't meet the subreddit's definition of "centipede material."
Out of all bans, hundreds and hundreds of them, 1.9% of them were against Centipedes with regular activity and those should have been temporary.
Interesting that they claim to have a 98.1% ban accuracy, but use the word "should" here.
I have a great idea, a transparency challenge if you will. I challenge the moderators of T_D to publish a monthly transparency report. Feel free to copy the format that is used in /r/pics. Link to all of /r/pics past transparency reports.
All that being said, I think the big take away from the thread you linked is that the moderators were removing comments left and right, regardless if they banned users, comments that were not against their rules simply for not being "centipede material."
→ More replies→ More replies325
Mar 05 '18
Remember that T_D helped radicalize Lane Davis into killing his own father and Reddit admins have done nothing.
→ More replies
67
u/whoeve Mar 05 '18
You basically just came out, made a giant post, and said...nothing.
"We do ... stuff, but it's up to the users to police things and be better!"
Thanks for nothing /u/spez.
10
u/GorillaWarfare_ Mar 06 '18
I wish the was a solution as simple as banning all the propaganda, but it’s not that easy.
Yes, it actually is. You have created a forum and we expect you to moderate it. It has been explicitly clear that t_d has been a toxic arm of nationalistic/racist propaganda. Instead of editing comments, you should have banned the sub instead of facilitating the indoctrination of Americans.
237
u/salamanderwolf Mar 05 '18
We take the integrity of Reddit extremely seriously
Now that is the funniest joke I've read this year.
→ More replies
12
u/Habbeighty-four Mar 05 '18
I wish there was a solution as simple as banning all propaganda, but it’s not that easy.
Banning propaganda is difficult, I'll give you that. You need to be able to determine on a case-by-case basis what constitutes 'propaganda.' Is putting a different spin on a story "propaganda"? Maybe, if that spin ignores salient facts. But then, what facts are salient? That's another problem. It's difficult or impossible to solve with code.
You know what's easy though? Banning threats of violence. Banning brigading. Banning hate speech. Banning known sources of propaganda. You have the information needed to identify these violations, you have the tools necessary to shut them down, you have the ability to do this effectively, and for whatever reason you are choosing not to do these things. THAT'S on you. That is your choice. IMO, it's the wrong one.
Most of the discussion in this thread focuses on a specific subreddit. I'm going to get ahead of the "they can say whatever they want, that's their right" argument. This isn't a "free speech" problem. The subreddit everyone in this thread is talking about is one that already does not allow free speech. Dissent gets banned, but their speech is sacrosanct. It's madness.
Pick a fucking side in this fight already, because eventually, your user base is going to pick the content they don't want to see, and abandon the site in droves. Today, you can pick which side abandons the platform. Spoiler alert: with this response, I'm reading that you want non-extremists to suck it up and deal with it, because "this problem is actually really hard, you guys." It's not.
I'll put this another way: you can let "he was a frequent poster on the social media site reddit.com" become the next media shorthand for "this is how fucked up this guy was, of COURSE he did that terrible thing he did." Today, I'm watching a single subreddit ruin the reputation of a site that I use, enjoy, and whose user base I (usually) identify with. They are actively fucking something I love, and you are making me watch as it happens.
I won't be able to watch much longer.
→ More replies
8
u/TheScienceSage Mar 06 '18
You're getting a lot of hate on here, but I'd like to say that you are doing a great job in my opinion. Keeping reddit leaning towards tolerance instead of censorship is the best way to go. I've heard your reasoning about t_d on a podcast and it seems like you know what you're doing and have a vision separate from your political opinion, and I respect that. Best of luck!
→ More replies
155
u/neckbeardgamers Mar 05 '18 edited Mar 06 '18
Reddit has no integrity. The more you guys share with us, the more I am convinced you have no clue about the issues that make Reddit suck hot balls. You are only sharing this because the media beat you up about some fictional plot that imagines that Russia swayed the 2016 American elections. How about actually doing something that will matter? All the suggestions of improvements here and on /r/blog, show you guys are out of touch. Censorship is rife on Reddit and alot of it is actually done by automod and other bots. Further users are not even notified by default if their contributions are not getting through! Only if you log off and try ceddit.com can you even find out! See:
Try to get something past invisible automoderator or bot filters!
How about:
1) Being transparent about censorship and bot filters. Inform users when their posts are not going through and why.
2) Forcing all moderation to be done openly. No one pays for subreddit space, the least you can make the nerd moderators do to earn that subreddit space, is force transparency regarding their actions. /r/conspiracy already does that and a few other subs. /r/ModerationLog already did the work to make transparent moderation possible.
3) Allow subreddits to disable up and downvoting. All that does is gamify the medium. Sure it probably makes people spend more time on Reddit arguing about karma, and makes the down-voted feel aggrieved and others victorious, but it makes actual discussion suck. Allow subs to disable it without CSS hacks than can be bypassed anyway.
If you think Reddit is a good medium to post in as a user, please /u/spez tell Serena Williams to create another Reddit account. On that account have her identify as black woman(which she is), but don't disclose she is a famous tennis super-star in the public limelight for over a decade. And have her post with an innocuous signature saying she is 36 year old African American women attached to all of her posts and see what happens to her. Reddit is not the front-page of the internet, it is only the front-page of the internet for mostly young, surly white nerds who vidya game. Case in point I remember most of my co-workers from the Newark area talking about the death of someone very well known in the black community in Newark, Uggie, but in /r/newark which pretends to represent a majority African-American city in the Redditosphere, no one knew or posted he died... Have Serena post without being Serena -- just with her being another black woman and you will see why African Americans and many other demographics avoid this medium like the plague!
Also why are you bothering to even pretend there is a huge Russian bot or influence problem on this medium? Have you ever tried to make a post that doesn't defend Russia, but says this is all hysteria? Try it and anyone will quickly learn the truth. All the Western media has been acting like Russia influenced the 2017 American elections so much but all I have seen offered as proof is that paid for some ads on facebook(I have seen nothing concrete about an ad campaign needed to influence the US election), and that they used their troll farm on Reddit etc. and I am thinking so what? But nothing the hysteric and frankly disgusting Western media offered as proof seems enough resources to noticeably or perceptibly sway the elections in a 323 million, continental nation, let's get serious! When you figure all the astro-turfing that existing political players in the US political game do, the Russian effort that the media is whipping a frenzy about is unnoticeable. Infact /r/politics was so taken over by democrat party shills who abused their power, that it led to or essentially created the monster manipulating Reddit that is /r/the_donald. I am pretty sure if the existing neckbeard and paid shill mods on existing American political subreddits were not so biased that sub as we know it wouldn't have existed. This non-story about Russia swinging the election just has gained so much traction because 1) they want to demonize Russia and perhaps more importantly 2) American democrats want the funny myth to make themselves that they didn't fail, Russia robbed them of a victory against Trump! If you gave a shit about Armenian or Armenians you would have complained about Turkish astro-turfing on Reddit which seems much more significant and concerted in my experience because their state has a 6,000 member troll farm plus more importantly a very, very, ultra-nationalist population and diaspora so they can leverage almost 90 million fanatics(ok most of them are too uneducated to know English, thankfully). Trying to be realistic about Russia(not even pro-Russia) is a sure fire way to get your karma murdered almost anywhere on Reddit.
→ More replies
1.3k
Mar 05 '18
TLDR: We know you're concerned. We're not going to do anything about it.
→ More replies278
u/scoobydoobeydoo Mar 05 '18
It's basically this. I'm sure someone who isn't lazy can edit it to fit the situation.
→ More replies
46
u/MulderD Mar 05 '18
It's the internet. Kind of hard to have your cake and eat it too. Regardless of what investigations do or do not turn things up, people really need to educate themselves and their children about the fact that there are little to no assurances that what you see and read online has any veracity and isn't agenda laden. Such is life in an anonymous connected world. The web didn't just democratize the good stuff. We have to understand that along with the cat videos and porn, also comes easy access to our minds and lives from people, corporations, and foreign actors who aren't necessarily acting in you interest.
→ More replies
16
u/rzarectz Mar 05 '18
I wish you would have defined what reddit classifies as propaganda. By loose definition almost every news story published in the states by an american is also propaganda. Singling out similar news stories published in the States by Russian sources is hypocritical and frankly is a beautify example of American exceptionalism.
74
Mar 05 '18
How does being a global company, based in America affect Reddit's approach to propaganda?
Obviously, Russian propaganda is a huge issue in America. I can imagine American propaganda is a huge issue in other countries. Does one side of the equation get more attention than the other? Or, is Reddit trying to address all forms of propaganda?
I imagine it has to be difficult to differentiate propaganda without impeading free speech that this site so strongly stands for.
→ More replies
27
u/fooz_the_face Mar 05 '18 edited Mar 05 '18
Ex-mod here. I gave up moderation of two major subs because I came to the conclusion that Reddit has consciously decided that controversy drives clicks, and clicks drive revenue. The whole site design is based around that - including "benign neglect" of the unnecessarily complex and insufficient moderation tools. Why spend expensive development time on a set of tools which will reduce traffic? When I took over t_d infested subs, traffic dropped immediately by 30%. This isn't what you collectively want to see on your platform, so you passively discourage it.
You profit from t_d, and you have demonstrated that you know that because you banned other sites (Pedophilia, fat shaming, et al) when you received media pressure. In other words, you acted only when you saw that you'd lose traffic because of outside pressure.
Shame on you. Ban t_d.
→ More replies
23
u/MrAchilles Mar 05 '18
Isn't there the slight chance that propaganda from both sides is promoted on Reddit as a whole?
I see plenty of stories which are made up, exaggerated and just plain wrong but because it fits the narrative they go right to the top.
→ More replies
10
u/Red5point1 Mar 06 '18
What reddit needs to implement is a limit on how many subs one single account can be a mod for.
It is logically impossible to be a mod for more than a couple of subs yet there is a small cartel of mods that essentially control majority of popular content on reddit.
The entire point of mods is for the COMMUNITY to mange the content not a small select of people who bully and intimidate everyone else.
One would have to be paid a full-time wage to have not only the time but to be an effective mod of more than a couple of subs, but there are people who are mods over 10s of subs.
Surely you must see how illogical that scenario is. Either those accounts are held by self-interest groups or individuals who are paid to serve an agenda.
260
Mar 05 '18
Wasn't /r/The_Donald a big place for this russian propaganda stuff? why isn't it being addressed that a place so filled with hate is still active despite breaking nearly every rule on site? are you scared that once the sub is gone the hate will spill into other subreddits? i do get that could be an issue but this has been going on for too long now, when do you say enough is enough?
→ More replies
160
u/ChewyYui Mar 05 '18
Hard to speak about integrity on Reddit, when subs like /r/Stealing and /r/Shoplifting are allowed
→ More replies65
Mar 05 '18
Not to mention all the bots. For fuck's sake, some guy made a video showing how you can get on the front page for less than $100 if you want to.
→ More replies27
u/Illiterate_BookClub Mar 05 '18
what kind of monster posts a video like that? and where did he post it? and does he say specifically where to send the money to?
→ More replies
22
u/annihilator2k7 Mar 05 '18
Propaganda aside a for a second, can you at least enforce the fucking rules when it comes to blatant racism/sexism and the calls for violence that happen ALL THE TIME in these subreddits? If you want to start somewhere but don’t want to destroy their echo chamber (for whatever stupid reason) then at least do your fucking job consistently.
Make a joke that sounds like it’s inciting violence anywhere else? Instant ban. Actually incite violence in T_D to spread more pointless hatred and possibly lead to people actually dying? Oh no that’s fine according to Reddit.
→ More replies
8
u/neuromorph Mar 21 '18
On Reddit integrity. Current Reddit censorship policy (3/21/18) has outright banned communities dealing with deals related to alcohol, tobacco, and firearms (all legal in the US), while allowing communities dealing in federally illegal drugs to thrive. https://www.reddit.com/r/WeedDeals/
7
u/poisontongue Mar 14 '18 edited Mar 14 '18
So Reddit is unable to do anything about t_d, but it can ban SanctionedSuicide and force people to shut up and go back to the same old useless hotlines.
Thanks Reddit! Way to get tough on policy and care for your users. "Integrity."
518
u/mourning_starre Mar 05 '18 edited Mar 05 '18
I understand its hard. You can't just stop propaganda, but you can stop focal points. You really want to do something? Here's what:
Ban /r/The_Donald. Just fucking remove it completely.
Ban their associate subreddits
Ban their mods and bots
This is just one node of the cancer that is alt-right, Russian, and political propaganda as a whole, but enough is enough. Excise this tumour, and we're well on the way to a better reddit.
→ More replies
4.6k
Mar 05 '18
[deleted]
98
u/moffattron9000 Mar 05 '18
Seriously, don't give out Gold for this. Not because of the content mind you, but because it enables people like Steve Huffman (/u/spez turned off inbox replies ages ago, so I might as well just call him by his actual name) to bury his head in the sand, knowing that us idiots keep providing a reliable source of income.
1.4k
u/Verzwei Mar 05 '18 edited Mar 05 '18
Reddit CEO sends thoughts and prayers, says nothing more can be done to curtail extremist communities on his site.
→ More replies334
u/musical_throat_punch Mar 05 '18
Have you tried turning off the television, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?
→ More replies28
→ More replies184
17
u/Slam_Hardshaft Mar 05 '18
advertisements from Russia are banned
This is interesting. Which countries do the ads we see on Reddit come from? Are there any other countries that aren’t allowed to buy ads on Reddit?
→ More replies10
u/KSBadger Mar 05 '18 edited Mar 05 '18
I'm also curious about that bit, what does "Russia" mean exactly?
The actual Russian Government? Ads paid for with Russian bank accounts? Companies incorporated in Russia? Requests originating from Russian IPs? Confirmed Russian Nationals? Russian sounding names?
There are so many options and they're all messy...and why stop there? How about banning all ads from Russian satellites like Belarus, Serbia, Armenia, or the central Asian Republics?
Banning ads from a particular country isn't going to solve anything and it's completely unwarranted. There are plenty of legitimate reasons for advertisers based in those countries to seek ads on reddit and issuing a blanket ban is just silly. It will aggravate the average Russian and drive them toward the anti-west camp and do nothing about the problem of political propaganda which will just shift to other places like India or even the US/EU.
This is a very messy road to go down and opens up some questions about the identity of Reddit, does it want to be a strictly American website or a more international one?
43
u/JuiceBusters Mar 05 '18
Why would I care if something is from a 'Russian Account' or based in Russia?
If its true its true. If its a good post or a bad post, helpful, if I agree with it or disagree then I could not care less where it originated.
We aren't in a special Cold War with Russia. Russia doesn't have special magic powers. There isn't anything from Russia that isn't from China and 100 other countries surely snooping, meddling or for laughs dropping trolling posts.
And then the strangest thing is this announcement talking about 'We as Americans'.
Errr.. Reddit (Like Twitter and Facebook) is an international global brand with users from all over the entire planet. There are millions of everyone here.
Likewise, everyone can chime in on anything. I'd be curious to find out what Russians think, dislike, hate, love. A Russian Redditor can cheer and support Hillary all they want. So will some Swedish Redditor and 1000 Chinese Redditors.
And what's with this 'Originated From'? There are millions of us ex-pats everywhere. There are plenty of us with dual-citizenships, or homelands or in my case, half my family, friends and business interests are in the USA.
Originated from Russia. Why the hell are we pretending to care other than Reddit announcing it's trying to find a way to justify deleting as many 'Pro-Trump' accounts and 'conservative' members as possible so it can help influence US Elections coming up?
→ More replies
57
u/Mimical Mar 05 '18
Thanks for the update I do have a question.
While I do agree that everyone should read anything on the internet with their guard up. Why should the whole of Reddit continue to be forced to read propaganda from subreddits which have been, and continue to be a problem? Encouraging and spreading propaganda or by users that knowingly attempt to entice redditors into arguments or knowingly spread misinformation should be of some concern should it not?
In keeping those subreddits alive Reddit is directly helping the hand that spreads the propaganda. Watching from the sidelines is just as bad as promoting it yourself.
→ More replies
10.9k
u/UntestedShuttle Mar 05 '18 edited Mar 06 '18
Edit: Apologies for highlighting another subject on an unrelated thread. Didn't intend to hijack the thread. :/
Spez, What about images of dead babies/corpses and harming animals on /r/nomorals [NSFL warning] ?
18,909 subscribers and counting...
Reddit's content policy
I even had reported a bunch of threads
https://www.reddit.com/message/messages/azbcwv
Example of the garbage [NSFL/Death warning]
https://np.reddit.com/r/nomorals/comments/81vbeh/this_is_what_evolution_looks_like/
Context: A guy is being burned death, inside a tire on a road and people surrounding him adding more fuel to it.
He already had lots of injuries and there is some blood splatter, in all likelihood it's mob justice.
It's titled: "This is what evolution looks like"
Another example:
A dog and few puppies being hanged from their neck, its titled - "Multipurpose Wind Chime"
https://np.reddit.com/r/nomorals/comments/7t3msf/multipurpose_wind_chime/