[HN Gopher] /r/StableDiffusion - Mod here - My side of the story
___________________________________________________________________
/r/StableDiffusion - Mod here - My side of the story
Author : BudaDude
Score : 328 points
Date : 2022-10-11 16:10 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (old.reddit.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (old.reddit.com)
| make3 wrote:
| I wish this post was renamed to, "Discord transfers the ownership
| of fan Discord server to company without owner's consent" @dang
| varelse wrote:
| avereveard wrote:
| It did seem a weird turn of event them restricting 1.5 weights.
| Seems instead it was just a piece of the puzzle.
| MintsJohn wrote:
| Which they aren't intending to do, but it's just part of the
| fud currently spread around.
|
| Rarely have I seen so much fud spread, while also
| systematically using the least charitable interpretation of
| anything stability.ai or emad said/announced. (the whole covid
| skeptics shit storm comes to mind).
|
| I could understand where this would be coming from if it was
| aimed against the use of these AI models, but this seems to be
| from the proponents.
|
| Of course, I can see the dissatisfaction, but not the
| escalation, does any one really think stability.ai should
| associate itself with software piracy?! Cause that's what this
| started about, enabling the use of a a stolen model and
| weights. The way I set it the only safe action for stability.ai
| was to distance themselves from this as much as possible.
|
| Of course the reddit "takeover" happened a week before these
| events, the active mod, the one that started the linked topic,
| kept his moderation rights. One issue was that SD wanted to
| disclose private information to the modaal that required an
| NDA, not all ex mods wanted to sign. Either way the situation
| is more complex, not handled ideally, but again, using words
| life tricked is the least charitable interpretation. And for
| better or worse with stability.ai controlling the subreddit, in
| order to put distance between them and the tools that enable
| the use of pirated models (and in that repo there is an
| explicit discussion topic on how to use the pirated model to
| get the same results as novelai (the source of that model)) of
| course the link to the github repo that enabled the use of
| these was removed from the stickied topic listing blessed UIs
| and other things.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I don't really understand what's being alleged here. Nothing
| really seems bad to me. This person helped out when Stable
| Diffusion was much smaller by being a mod and creating a discord
| server. The op seems to say that Stable Diffusion was generally
| nice to him but communicated taking the discord channel poorly -
| okay, so?
|
| If you're working with people, especially on a rapidly moving
| startup, sometimes things aren't going to be communicated well.
| If the people are, on net, good to you with some problems
| shouldn't you be working with those people to improve problems
| rather than writing reddit exposes?
| m00dy wrote:
| Decentralisation fixes this.
| wsb_mod2 wrote:
| Unbelievable behavior from SD. The subreddit is currently an
| unmoderated mess, illustrating they have no clue how to run the
| community.
|
| I am unsurprised at Discord's behavior, handing over a server
| like that. They have essentially been hostile when not silent to
| us at WSB with our 600K user server.
|
| Reddit has an opportunity to do better here. Hand back control of
| r/StableDiffusion back to OP.
|
| Steve Huffman alluded to the disaster that is sub transitions in
| the recent Mod Summit. If someone at Reddit is reading this, this
| is your opportunity to do better.
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| OP handed over the subreddit willingly and did not say they
| wanted it back... There really isn't a big deal other than
| supposed possible censorship and conflict of interest, but
| AFAIK there's been no hate threads censored anyway. The only
| thing "censored" was auto's webUI being removed from the
| stickied guide and the illegal novelAI leak torrent being
| removed.
| wsb_mod2 wrote:
| There's nothing to indicate they wanted to leave. They are
| still a mod there (without full perms).
|
| They handed over the subreddit under a promise that was
| immediately broken by the other party. So yes, I suppose you
| could say they handed it over willingly, but they did so
| about as willingly as handing money over to an advance-fee
| scam.
|
| However, this is largely irrelevant because what Reddit truly
| cares about (insofar as community management) is stability,
| and I think it's fair to say the community is very unstable
| right now, and is unlikely regain that stability.
| tylersmith wrote:
| OP handed it over based on a deal that Stability did not hold
| up their end of.
| Thorentis wrote:
| Sure, but that isn't Reddit's problem. Reddit can't step in
| and choose sides based on he said/she said accusations
| about moderation drama. The fact is, this person handed
| over ownership of the sub to somebody else willingly.
| That's the end of it. Discord was another matter.
| webdoodle wrote:
| Could you link to the Mod Summit your talking about? I wonder
| if 'sub transitions' is code for stealing subreddits from mods
| the admins don't politically agree with.
| lrae wrote:
| Those are not public. Invite only.
| Marsey wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lY8Fc8VzdY
| wsb_mod2 wrote:
| I cannot, as it was invite only. (Edit: As lrae said)
|
| The context is more around how communities should be able to
| naturally transition as opposed to only doing so during
| event-driven periods of great distress (E.g. r/AntiWork ->
| r/WorkReform).
|
| There doesn't seem to be much post-summit discussion about it
| that I can find. I suspect because it's largely been
| overshadowed by other, more... spicy, topics.
| mistermann wrote:
| Reddit management may sometimes have to accept marching orders
| from a higher power - geopolitically, AI is strategically very
| important as we've seen in various news stories over the last
| month or so, and being in control of narratives is plain old
| common sense if you ask me.
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/xzdkio/stab...
|
| apparently, there is a _separate_ drama about hacking at SD and
| accusations of ownership of code.
| omgmajk wrote:
| Whew, spicy. This will be interesting to follow. Did the AMA
| happen already?
| minimaxir wrote:
| That drama is most likely the catalyst of the current drama.
| (i.e. StabilityAI getting control of the subreddit to control
| the NAI leak/discourage use of the AUTOMATIC1111 UI)
|
| Which violates a number of Reddit's conflict of interest rules
| for moderators.
| lrae wrote:
| > Which violates a number of Reddit's conflict of interest
| rules for moderators.
|
| Those don't exist. There is something called the
| "Reddiquette" which is by the community and completely
| informal.
|
| Subreddits owned by companies is the new normal and if you
| look at games, most reddit users these days even prefer it to
| community-run ones. Not uncommon to have two subreddits at a
| launch of a game and the unofficial one will always "lose".
|
| Besides that, Reddit itself reaches out to brands & product
| owners and influencers to make official subs for them,
| managed by those entities then.
|
| Subreddits are the new Facebook Groups and Reddit is
| completely "mainstream". I wonder what's next in a couple of
| years. Maybe we can go back to forums :)
| dmonitor wrote:
| > most reddit users these days even prefer it to community-
| run ones. Not uncommon to have two subreddits at a launch
| of a game and the unofficial one will always "lose".
|
| Games often link to the "official" reddit community from
| inside the game, so no surprise that traffic will be driven
| there
| lrae wrote:
| Sure, they also share them on their socials and are vocal
| about it.
|
| But even besides that, if you look at any time this
| situation happened in the last ~3 years, you'll always
| see more users being vocal about the preferring the
| official sub than the community one in comparison.
|
| Reddit's demographics changed, and it just exploded over
| the last couple of years with "casual users", "went
| mainstream" or what ever one wants to call it.
|
| Most users these days don't even know that "official
| subreddits" were something that was super unpopular and
| uncommon on Reddit.
| ZiiS wrote:
| Eternal September
| debugnik wrote:
| > "Reddiquette" which is by the community and completely
| informal.
|
| It used to be official, although still informal. It was
| eventually relegated to an obscure page in their help desk,
| though.
| jVinc wrote:
| This is such a weird drama. The way I read it SD was
| effectively trying to put pressure on a guy because he
| developed a popular UI for using SD, and made that UI also
| support another model. So all their moral grandstanding is
| effectively just about trying to keep the popular gateway site
| pointing only at them, but their throwing shit at the guy who
| gave them that huge free PR push... What an odd position, but
| understandable, it looks like the people behind SD are a bunch
| of amateurs who weren't ready for the widespread attention and
| rather than ride the wave they are trying to shut down the
| beaches to claim that they own the ocean.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| Indeed it's a decision that feels like it was made in a
| tonedeaf echo chamber. As a rule of thumb, if it is allowed
| on GitHub then coders are probably okay with that, and
| individual companies will have to use the dmca process.
|
| This goes beyond that, taking the stance that by merely
| conforming your api to work with a user-provided proprietary
| checkpoint, you're in the wrong? This same philosophy forbids
| sharing open source game emulators, and we all know how that
| turned out (can be the best way to play a game).
| avereveard wrote:
| it's seem a case of "build an audience and monetize later"
| except they gave the golden gose itself to the audience
| instead of the egg,
|
| now they're in "monetize later" and some rando's internet
| repo is more usable and has a better pipeline than their
| "dreamstudio", and to boot now these rare gtx aren't rare
| anymore thanks to the bitcoin crash, so enthusiast can
| readily use the model at home.
| ronsor wrote:
| Nitpick, but it's not so much the Bitcoin crash as it is
| Ethereum switching away from proof-of-work (GPU) mining.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Is NAI related to SD in any way?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Different trained model, which was extracted from its creator
| via unauthorized system access and is illicitly available via
| BitTorrent. The drama appears to have started because an
| open-source developer who wrote a web frontend to control SD
| adapted that frontend to control the hacked model also, which
| has offended SD's CEO (because of the general principle of
| "Don't help software pirates").
|
| The additional drama includes that said open-source author
| has looked at the leaked code and concluded that it stole
| some of his open source work in the way it tunes text
| parameters.
| minimaxir wrote:
| > which has offended SD's CEO (because of the general
| principle of "Don't help software pirates").
|
| There is likely a legal threat by NAI involved in the
| decision calculus here.
| neuronexmachina wrote:
| > The additional drama includes that said open-source
| author has looked at the leaked code and concluded that it
| stole some of his open source work in the way it tunes text
| parameters.
|
| My understanding might be out of date, but as I recall it
| seemed that the code he thought was stolen from his open-
| source work actually originated from a third project that's
| MIT licensed.
| Ukv wrote:
| I think that's confusing between two issues in opposite
| directions:
|
| 1. Accusations that AUTOMATIC1111 (the web frontend
| developer) copied code from the NovelAI leak relating to
| the loading of hypernetworks
|
| 2. The leak revealing that Anlatan (the company behind
| NovelAI) had copied code from AUTOMATIC1111's repo (who,
| as above, Anlatan are accusing of copying from _them_ )
| relating to the weighting of words. AUTOMATIC1111's repo
| does not have a permissive license to allow this
|
| The third party MIT-licensed code is relevant to #1. Some
| code AUTOMATIC1111 was accused of copying from the leak
| (https://i.imgur.com/r1AkvBG.png) actually already
| appears in multiple older permissively-licensed public
| repos (https://github.com/lucidrains/perceiver-
| pytorch/blob/main/pe...,
| https://github.com/CompVis/stable-
| diffusion/blob/main/ldm/mo...), one of which was credited
| in the readme by AUTOMATIC1111.
|
| For #2, the Anlatan CEO blamed it on an intern
| (https://i.imgur.com/BFjKG1V.png). The leak shows that
| the offending code was committed by the CEO
| (https://i.imgur.com/aLiA2tr.png), which doesn't
| necessarily rule it out originating from an intern (e.g:
| "send me the code over teams to review and I'll add it")
| but doesn't look great.
|
| From other examples I'd say AUTOMATIC1111 did get a bit
| sloppy in terms of not following clean-room design
| regarding the leak, but I'm inclined to give some leeway
| to a solo developer making a hugely popular public tool
| for free.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| Damn, Emad seems sort of clueless? Hard rules about
| software piracy like that feel very 90's and totally
| unnecessary. Just avoid explicitly condoning any projects
| and move past it! It will be old news in like 2 weeks at
| the current rate of things.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Given the dude spent half a million dollars on training
| SD, I wouldn't be surprised if even though he chose to
| open-source the trained model, he has strong opinions on
| whether people should have the right to choose to open-
| source such things vs. having third-party crackers breach
| their systems and publish for them.
| nullc wrote:
| Perhaps, but the model weights themselves are currently
| understood to be uncopyrightable, and it's pretty
| inconceivable that the model could become copyrightable
| without becoming a derivative work of the training data.
|
| Unless these AI companies want google and facebook to be
| literally the only companies in the world that can train
| large scale machine learning (by using their TOS to get
| licenses from their users) they should tread carefully.
|
| In this particular case the leaked code apparently
| exposed that the proprietary codebase was also using the
| OSS developer's work without attribution.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| " it's pretty inconceivable that the model could become
| copyrightable"
|
| If it costs $10 million to find
| information/weightings/etc., our current legal system
| would consider that intellectual property which might not
| be copyrightable but would be considered IP theft if
| stolen.
| nullc wrote:
| Yes, it could be a trade secret, but if the trade secrecy
| would still apply is extraordinarily fact specific.
|
| If they were negligent in handling it, e.g. left it on a
| publicly accessible share and some member of the public
| stumbled into it, then trade secret protection would
| likely be lost.
|
| If some employee violated their NDA and snuck it out--
| well that would be a different matter. etc.
| nonbirithm wrote:
| > [...] it's pretty inconceivable that the model could
| become copyrightable without becoming a derivative work
| of the training data.
|
| Another perspective that may become important is the fact
| that not all cultures share the same interpretation of
| copyright. In Japan there was a case in which a court
| ruled that selling a memory card with preloaded save data
| for a video game was a breach of the original work's
| integrity.[1]
|
| This I think will get greater attention in the near
| future because a large portion of the interest in SD
| stems from generating new art derived from the styles of
| art on Pixiv, a Japanese website. The data for many
| popular forks of SD like Waifu Diffusion and the
| proprietary NovelAI model were sourced from Western sites
| like Danbooru, which has been known for violating
| copyright and artist takedown requests by reposting art
| without the creator's permission for many years. With the
| sheer popularity of SD and the fact that so much of the
| innovation came off of the backs of thousands of artists
| who weren't so much as asked for consent, it remains to
| be seen if attitudes towards those sites and this process
| of mass-scale data collection will remain the same in the
| near future.
|
| I also have to wonder what the implications would have
| been if NovelAI ended up launching what is now the leaked
| model as a paid service, given the unresolved question of
| consent that surrounds the original data.
|
| HN and the people who support SD can have their own
| opinions about copyright not applying in this specific
| case. They can delve into the technicalities of why they
| think the models are not copyrightable. But even beyond
| legal means, the artists can still ask the programmers to
| take everything down, and potentially be refused. The
| insistence that "it's different in this case" can break
| the hearts of people that see the world differently.
|
| I think this will be a debate that transcends arguing
| over the technicalities of copyright, involving
| fundamentally differing cultural values of how the acts
| of creation and reproduction should be treated with
| respect. It will not end with "how will this fit into the
| existing (Western-centric) framework of copyright," but
| "what is the right thing to do."
|
| [1] https://ja.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%81%A8%E3%81%8D%E3
| %82%81%...
| nullc wrote:
| The law is not ethics. The law is the bare minimum.
|
| Anyone who sets their ethics based on the law is probably
| acting like a big jerk.
|
| :)
| shadowgovt wrote:
| If anything, in the absence of copyrightability, the
| _only_ protection is trade secrecy and I 'd expect Emad
| to be even deeper in the opinion space of "We cut off the
| oxygen (systematically speaking) of those who would steal
| trained ML data."
|
| There's an interesting anecdote around how stand-up
| comedians protect jokes against theft, given how weak
| copyright is on jokes: it's keying cars, poisoning drinks
| (generally non-fatally, but it's hard to have a good
| night on stage when your lower GI tract wants to be
| elsewhere), and never-work-in-this-town-again agreements.
| We put these protections into the law because the
| alternative isn't no protection; it's people-take-it-
| into-their-own-hands protection.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| This method only works when the people you are trying to
| attack and/or blackball from an industry actually want to
| be in that industry. Lots of people will just use these
| ML models without trying to participate in the "ML
| community" the same way my wife and I tell each other
| jokes from comedians without trying to be comedians
| ourselves.
|
| The users of these models and the developers are
| fundamentally different.
| gfd wrote:
| Was there a dedicated HN submission for this topic?
|
| This is extremely fascinating to me. In what Andrej Karpathy
| calls "software 2.0"[1], leaking your model is equivalent to
| leaking the main IP of your company. Unlike source code where
| it loses value quickly out of context (e.g. twitch leaked their
| code yet that didn't spawn a bunch of twitch clones), models
| can be fine-tuned and transfer-learning-ed for many other
| purposes
|
| Since these models take millions of dollars to train, I see
| these sort of hacks becoming a thing! I wonder when companies
| will start adding "trap streets"[2] to prove that others are
| using their stolen models?
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y57wwucbXR8
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street
| nonbirithm wrote:
| I did actually submit a link to a GitHub issue about this,
| but it seems to have been blocked by HN. I can see the post
| title when I'm logged in but as a guest it doesn't show
| anything at all. The post wasn't even flagged as dead. It
| doesn't show up in my submitted links list when logged out
| either.
|
| I don't know if it tripped an internal filter on HN or
| something. Here is the link to the post in case you're
| curious.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33146603
|
| In case it matters I used the GitHub issue title as the name
| of the post - "Stable-diffusion-webui is using stolen code".
|
| Here is the actual link I posted.
|
| https://github.com/AUTOMATIC1111/stable-diffusion-
| webui/issu...
| wsb_mod2 wrote:
| Showing up as a blank page for me. Fascinating.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/NzFX5Cz.png
| nonbirithm wrote:
| This is what it looks like for me.
|
| https://imgur.io/di80ueh
| SSLy wrote:
| I see a "vouch" option below the linked post, so probably
| someone flagged it as soon as it arrived in the queue.
| topynate wrote:
| Do you have showdead enabled? To me, it looks like a post
| that's been automatically made dead - i.e. I see [dead]
| but not [flagged]. I know there are certain (very few)
| things a user in good standing can say in a comment to
| produce that outcome, not sure what's happened in this
| post though.
| nonbirithm wrote:
| I do have showdead enabled. It's possible the [dead]
| marker doesn't appear for one's own posts, but I'm not
| sure.
| dang wrote:
| We banned github.com/automatic1111 a while back because it
| was being promoted by some sort of spam ring.
|
| We can let that particular link go through if it's the best
| one on the topic but perhaps there is something else out
| there?
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| I can't speak to how people were behaving on HN, but
| automatic1111's is pretty much the gold standard for
| people who use SD locally on their machine, which might
| explain why a lot of people were posting it. It was
| however present on some recurring 'chan threads about SD,
| which might explain why it is linked to some unsavory
| behavior.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, I've unbanned it. Thanks to both of you.
| sophrocyne wrote:
| From my observation of the devolution on the SD Discord
| and reddit, that "spam ring" might just have been his
| user base.
| pdntspa wrote:
| If you're going to make those claims you need to be providing
| evidence, like side-by-side comparisons. What you have posted
| there reeks of a hit-and-run.
|
| Kind of with automatic on this one, good imperative code can
| only take so many forms.
|
| Plus there is the argument that no IP deserves protection,
| and that no IP owner should have any rights, ever, given that
| information is infinitely copyable and yearns to be free.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| " Plus there is the argument that no IP deserves
| protection, and that no IP owner should have any rights,
| ever, given that information is infinitely copyable and
| yearns to be free."
|
| These arguments aren't taken that seriously by people that
| understand investment, technology development, and risk
| mitigation though.
| pdntspa wrote:
| I get that, but that is because they have built
| businesses off the backs of IP exploitation. You cannot
| get people to understand your argument when their
| paycheck is derived from it.
|
| That we allow (even encourage) such blatant violations of
| natural laws and physics is one of the more contemptible
| attributes of us as a people, IMHO
|
| Just because an industry exists doesn't mean it's valid.
| Like living things, business entities have a survival
| instinct that will fight anything that that threatens it.
| And the dismantling of their business plan is a pretty
| big threat. Like cancer, these things start small and
| metastasize until they endanger the life of the host.
| [deleted]
| Poppys wrote:
| He was a minor and seemed to have more business sense than any of
| them.
| minimaxir wrote:
| The /r/StableDiffusion subreddit appears to skew younger,
| surprisingly.
|
| Open source AI art has likely been the biggest catalyst of
| getting teenagers interested in computer science/machine
| learning in years.
| andrewxdiamond wrote:
| Or art, since there's a new way to express yourself through a
| novel medium
| shadowgovt wrote:
| And that's going to have a titanic political-shift effect
| once those young folks come to voting age and start shaping
| policy around intellectual property ownership.
| schoen wrote:
| In the early-2000s "copyfight", many people theorized that
| the apparent support of young people for the "low-
| protectionist" side, or their enthusiasm for P2P file-
| sharing, or remixing, or fan fiction, was presaging a
| radical shift in copyright law once those young people grew
| up.
|
| A lot of them have grown up now and that shift doesn't seem
| to have happened on the legal side. Maybe there are some
| shifts in norms (e.g. many authors and publishers used to
| loudly maintain that fan fiction was not a fair use, but
| most seem to have decided that it would be a bad idea to
| sue over it, and it's become more normalized overall), but
| not much in legislation!
|
| So I'm not sure this outcome is in any way guaranteed.
|
| (Larry Lessig also said that his foray into copyright
| activism had convinced him that campaign finance was an
| obstacle to having legislation reflect public opinion. Not
| every issue is a "campaign issue", but some issues that
| legislators don't directly campaign on are very important
| to donors. Lessig concluded that copyright was one of
| those.)
| brnaftr361 wrote:
| Depends on how you define "young people", the average age
| of the US congress is 58 and Senate at 64. If the people
| I know in that age bracket are representative, they
| certainly don't exist in the "peer domain" that even has
| a conception of what we're discussing, even less so in
| the context of digital/software shit.
|
| We're talking from 1958-1964, in particular
| (predominately) the "elite" class of people born in that
| period who became successful career politicians, who are
| arguably (though not much of one when considering the
| evolution of IP law...) beholden to lobbyists which is
| just a convoluted way to say corporate interests or arm
| twisting from their peers...
|
| So no, young people aren't in control, and the ones that
| are will ostensibly be borne to power from their
| favorable starting position which means they're probably
| going to follow the trajectory and preserve the status
| quo.
| rockemsockem wrote:
| In the U.S. millenials just overtook baby boomers to be
| the majority of the voting population 2 years ago, so
| we're still pretty early on those people (myself
| included) being able to dramatically influence politics.
| It'll take even longer for them to become elected
| officials themselves.
| AyyWS wrote:
| 1. They grew up.
|
| 2a. Got a job and had kids/got hobbies. Stopped caring
| and just subscribed to Netflix like everyone else.
|
| --or--
|
| 2b. Created copyrightable works. Joined the
| protectionists.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| I don't think so. When the Napster/eMule/Ares/bittorrent
| crowd reached voting age intellectual property ownership,
| if anything, got even more tight
| minimaxir wrote:
| Reddit discussion for the original mod-replacement incident:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/y12jo3/sta...
|
| The entire subreddit is in a process of community migration now:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/
| skilled wrote:
| "they have done a lot for me" ...
|
| Okay, so maybe disclose what they have done for you? Because the
| only thing that would make sense is financial support. And if
| that is the case why spend time writing something that will not
| change the course of things.
| Aged6395 wrote:
| golemotron wrote:
| Anyone who "owns" a server or a sub should look at the TOS.
| Chances are they don't own anything. This is especially true for
| minors.
| blockinator wrote:
| Definitely makes me want to avoid discord. As far as Stability
| goes, it doesn't make them look great either. This kid showed a
| lot of good will and they still felt like they needed to pull the
| rug from under his feet.
| pnathan wrote:
| reddit mod management is a bit haywire. I am mod at a rather
| largish subreddit (> 750K subs/readers), and despite the top mod
| being gone from the subreddit for something like 6? years now and
| virtually inactive on reddit, I can't get him removed. I've gone
| through channels but, sigh.
| wsb_mod2 wrote:
| When did you go through the process?
|
| Reddit recently updated its top mod removal process (recently
| as in 5 days ago) and dramatically weakened requirements for
| removing top mods.
|
| More information on that here:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/xwim7v/updates_to_...
| shagie wrote:
| As an aside, there was some drama on /r/CSCareerQuestionsEU
| that spilled over into /r/CSCareerQuestions around a month
| ago ( https://old.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestionsEU/comments/x
| jbixl... and https://old.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comme
| nts/xoq0uu/r... https://www.unddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/co
| mments/xoq0uu/r... )
|
| The EU one isn't large, but the regular one is approaching
| 1M.
| pnathan wrote:
| months and months ago. Thanks for the heads up. I'll look
| into that.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| Have you thought about moving to a Lemmy instance? When a
| platform neglects you with no recourse, that seems like the
| best option from my POV.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| High-five for linking the "old" subdomain.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I'm not familiar with Reddit's rules here: do they generally
| allow minors to mod a subreddit?
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| They don't ask your age. (Except probably "are you over 13" at
| account creation).
| nsilvestri wrote:
| Reddit's ToS require all users to be 13 or older. There is no
| other requirement to be a moderator, and moderation is
| independently managed by each subreddit. Reddit tends to be
| very hands-off with interfering with who moderates a subreddit,
| for both better and worse.
| moffkalast wrote:
| On the internet nobody knows you're a dog.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| ... until it matters, and issues like "Minors can't enter
| into contracts" result in someone getting their account
| unceremoniously ping-ponged around because they have fewer
| rights than an adult.
| codeflo wrote:
| So, to summarize: Both Reddit and Discord force transfered
| seemingly officially named communities to the trademark owning
| entity. That sucks, but it's also something that social media
| companies have been doing 10 times a week since forever. Is there
| something special about this instance that makes it news?
| registeredcorn wrote:
| >Is there something special about this instance that makes it
| news?
|
| I suppose one could go the, "SD had a minor doing the work,
| which they then capitalized on" route, but I find it a little
| uncompelling.
|
| If SD had _asked_ the minor to moderate the subreddit, then
| took it away from him afterward, that would be an issue. Doubly
| so if they were aware of his age. From the description that was
| given, none of that applied.
|
| As it is, I see it as fixing up a parking spot for the CEO;
| cleaning the ground, repainting the lines, putting up a nice
| shiny plaque, all unasked. Then getting upset when the CEO
| parks in the spot and leaves garbage strewn about. It's not
| nice, or even fair, but it is not particularly surprising
| either. Hard work is _rarely_ appreciated, even when it is
| actively being paid for. "Took you long enough" is a phrase I
| have heard thrown about on projects before. When work is
| unfunded? You will be lucky to get so much as a mention, let
| alone a head nod or thumbs up.
|
| I just hope that he can learn from this experience and remind
| himself how much he is making the next time he takes up a
| project of this kind. There is nothing wrong with working for
| free, but it is crucially important to remember that the merit
| of working for free does not somehow entitle us to anything.
| It's not something that brings me any joy to say, but it is
| true.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Mostly that yet another online community is shocked to learn
| that they thought they were living in a house they'd invested
| their own sweat equity into building when the whole time, they
| were really living in a shantytown parked in a spare corner of
| some corporation's city.
|
| If it ain't your computer (and if no money even changed hands),
| it ain't your property.
| tommek4077 wrote:
| It always sounds strange when someone is talking about a
| "server" after creating a chat channel on a glorified IRC-
| fork.
| masklinn wrote:
| TBF server is what discord calls it. And a discord server
| can contain a multitude of channels with fairly extensive
| individual customisation.
|
| So it goes quite a bit further than "a chat channel".
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| As far as I know they still stick to "guild" as the
| official term, but virtually everybody calls a guild a
| "server"
| NathanielK wrote:
| They changed all the user facing docs to "server" a while
| back. Internally the code might still say "guild", but
| officially they've embraced calling them servers.
| wsb_mod2 wrote:
| Reddit did not "force transfer" the community, the top
| moderator was convinced to hand it over.
|
| Reddit, for all its faults, goes to great lengths to give its
| moderators latitude and discretion to operate their
| communities, and only steps in as an absolute last resort.
| kbenson wrote:
| The top moderator was changed at the request if stability to
| someone they had more trust in (but was still a community
| member and not an employee), and then they convinced that
| person to transfer. That person identified themselves as a
| minor.
|
| I wonder if Stability fucked up by using a minor in this
| case. They seem to still view Stability in high regard,
| mostly it seems because they are hoping for future gain from
| the relationship, but I doubt they'll feel that way forever.
| Probably they won't feel that way for much longer given
| Stability's heavy handed approach. It might be a lot easier
| to reverse some of this once it's made obvious they took
| advantage of a minor.
| mjr00 wrote:
| Many people are under the false impression that Discord,
| Reddit, Twitter, etc., treat ordinary people the same way they
| do corporations and celebrities. Which is obviously false, as
| we see here--on these platforms, corporations win every time.
|
| Social media died the day that Shaquille O'Neal was no longer
| @THE_REAL_SHAQ.
| nperez wrote:
| Yikes. I know there are points in an early-stage company where
| things are very unstructured and you end up in situations that
| you maybe wouldn't want as a larger company.. but in this case,
| it sounds like it would have been better for them to allow
| official and community-based channels of communication to live
| separately.
| TekMol wrote:
| I recently posted on a subreddit that has the name of a big
| company.
|
| The post became popular.
|
| I could not believe my eyes, when some hours later, the post was
| edited.
|
| I have never seen that before. Mods cannot edit users posts,
| right? Do some companies have superpowers on their sub, or did
| they reach out to Reddit to change the post?
| nsilvestri wrote:
| Mods cannot edit posts, only admins. In my experience, however,
| reddit generally opts to fully remove any posts that break
| terms of service or guidelines. I've never seen a partial edit
| of another user's post by an admin with one drama-filled
| exception.
| mike_d wrote:
| If your post was edited, you should change your password and
| enable two factor authentication. Editing posts is not
| something mods can do. Admins (Reddit employees) are able to do
| this, but it is an extremely serious action that raises red
| flags.
|
| If your post was edited to say "[Removed]" or "[Removed by
| Reddit]" that is a deletion, not an edit.
|
| [Disclaimer: used to work for Reddit]
| wsb_mod2 wrote:
| There is no mechanism to enable mods to edit user posts. If
| what you're saying is correct, it would be quite the
| controversy.
|
| Use https://camas.unddit.com/ to look at the original version
| of your post, or share it here. You can also hover over the
| timestamp on old.reddit.com to show the last edit date.
| nullc wrote:
| You should also check the login history for your account-- it
| may not be impossible that your account is compromised.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| On Reddit, supposedly only admins can edit posts. You should
| name and shame the company/sub
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Unless it is a very recent change, that is always been true
| and admins don't even typically edit comments/submissions
| (with one very famous and controversial exception[0]). Mods
| can apply flair I believe though.
|
| [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/5frg1n/ti
| fu_...
| colordrops wrote:
| The admins have done it and even admitted to it. Reddit is a
| for-profit corporation and has no obligation to maintain
| integrity unfortunately. They are beholden to shareholders and
| will do what their large customers ask.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Admins admitted to it once and it created enough controversy
| that they just fully delete stuff now.
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| When you realise Reddit is moderated by unpaid megalomaniacs and
| teenagers, everything starts to fall into place. In some ways
| Reddit is worse than Facebook because it is influenced by
| anonymous entities with zero checks and balances.
| [deleted]
| holoduke wrote:
| I got banned on /r/world news supposedly because I said
| something negative about Ukraine. The only thing I wanted was a
| healthy dialog without picking a side. I asked for
| clearification. Didn't hear anything. Got fed up with reddit
| anyway.
| paganel wrote:
| That sub has been long gone, unfortunately. The same goes for
| /r/europe, even though in this latter case I think the hive-
| mind is at least a little bit more genuine, as in there are
| real people holding those views, unlike what happens on
| /r/worldnews.
| baxtr wrote:
| Yeah, because they want to save on mod costs, I guess. Related
| to that: I am wondering, does @dang get a monthly paycheck for
| his incredible work?
| wsb_mod2 wrote:
| Yup, @dang is paid.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23810452
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| How much?
| MerelyMortal wrote:
| Why do you want to know? I can't imagine how knowing that
| answer is going to make anything better for anyone here.
| Are you a mod of a similar service and need something to
| negotiate with? Even as a negotiating datapoint, it's
| only valuable if YC would hire you to moderate (which I
| doubt) and you can use that as leverage.
|
| If it was public, then random users might demand more of
| dang, thinking that his salary justifies it.
| prophesi wrote:
| Keeping salaries public in an industry lets you use them
| as a negotiating datapoint anywhere in that industry.
|
| Not too related to the discussion, but I'm really hoping
| Twitch moderators start asking for a paycheck once their
| streamer's realtime chat reaches a certain size, as they
| have to stay quick and attentive for hours straight. But
| sadly, they often start when the streamer is smaller and
| work for them on their own dime and remain that way.
| cowtools wrote:
| He recieves a few snowdogs at the end of the week.
| baxtr wrote:
| Snowdoges?
| themitigating wrote:
| [deleted]
| lawrenceyan wrote:
| I mean hopefully he's paid well? Making salary a private
| issue only hurts people in my opinion.
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| "Oh no! Someone asked something on the Internet that I
| consider inappropriate!"
|
| You know there are communities/societies where people
| openly discuss their salary, right?
| jjulius wrote:
| Yes, but your approach is wildly unhelpful. Downvote it
| and move on.
| adventured wrote:
| Or don't downvote it and disregard. It's very common on
| HN for people to openly discuss salaries and ask about
| salaries.
| exolymph wrote:
| It's definitely none of your business, but as someone who
| does similar work, I'd guess in the territory of
| $100k-150k. (That's not how much I get paid, but I work
| at a much smaller and less established org.)
| WhitneyLand wrote:
| Worth every penny.
| saghm wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the HN moderators do it as a job and not just
| as a hobby. I remember reading this[1] a few years back when
| it came out, and from a quick scan it seems to support this,
| although it's possible in my skimming I might have misread.
|
| [1]: https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-
| valley/th...
| MrsPeaches wrote:
| Article about him here:
| https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-
| valley/th...
| skrbjc wrote:
| This says a lot about the biases of many journalists and
| why you are likely not getting a neutral viewpoint from
| many of them:
|
| "Picturing the moderators responsible for steering
| conversation on Hacker News, I imagined a team of men who
| proudly self-identify as neoliberals and are active in the
| effective-altruism movement. (I assumed they'd be white
| men; it never occurred to me that women, or people of
| color, could be behind the site.) Meeting them, I feared,
| would be like participating in a live-action comment thread
| about the merits of Amazon Web Services or whether women
| should be referred to as "females." "Debate us!" I imagined
| them saying, in unison, from their Aeron chairs."
| dahfizz wrote:
| That strikes me as genuinely insane. I don't understand
| why anyone would care what journalists have to say
| anymore.
| silisili wrote:
| Way worse than FB, I'd argue.
|
| I used to think Reddit users skewed too heavily in certain
| ways, and didn't make sense. One day, using some tool
| (removeddit, reveddit, etc), I noticed how many posts and
| comments were removed by moderators - things that went against
| the skew.
|
| It's one of the reasons places like r/politics became such an
| echo chamber dumpster fire.
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| Totally agree with you but it's nowhere near how bad facebook
| is. At least on reddit, opinions aren't illegal or approved
| by how Zucc and team see fit.
|
| Facebook is extremely ban happy and you can do absolutely
| nothing about it. On reddit, at the very least you can create
| your own sub or join subs where people won't ban you for
| whatever you have to say.
| silisili wrote:
| > create your own sub or join subs where people won't ban
| you for whatever you have to say
|
| Not exactly true. the_donald, all the numerous *InAction,
| some morbid, etc subs were all banned. Most of them because
| they didn't like what people were saying, regardless of
| what lies Reddit comes up with for the reason.
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| Yeah I'm not denying that in any capacity. I'm only
| speaking from personal experience. Getting banned on
| Facebook for opinions is extremely easy compared to
| Reddit.
|
| Yes both are biased but as long as you're not a guy
| infuriating more than half the Reddit employees, you're
| not usually banned which is opposite to Facebook as it
| would ban you no matter if you're a new account or an old
| account or are even posting an opinion on your wall with
| no friends.
| aliqot wrote:
| > opinions aren't illegal
|
| The _correct_ opinions aren 't illegal. Reddit is not a
| bastion of free speech [0].
|
| [0] -
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/14/reddit-
| ce...
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| I didn't say it is the bastion of free speech but it's
| much better than whatever Facebook is.
|
| 2 reasons:
|
| 1. Reddit does not usually participate in censorship
| itself. It's extremely rare for reddit accounts to be
| banned on the whole or for users to be banned from
| creating communities for like minded people.
|
| 2. Reddit allows you to create your custom feed. You
| could sort by new, you could create your own community,
| you could post opinions only on your account and reddit
| would not care.
|
| This is very different from how Facebook acts. The
| facebook algorithm is very biased, has checks for several
| trigger words and gradually profiles your political side
| and starts getting stricter as time passes.
|
| In my last 1-3 years on Facebook, I was been banned for
| at least 6 times and no I'm not a political person. I was
| banned for either posting an image that facebook
| algorithm didn't approve of, opinion on tech that
| somebody else attacked me for or in general, not being
| the person facebook ideologically asked me to be.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| Trying telling someone to kill themselves on Reddit, any
| accounts tied to your IP will get banned. Sure, that was a
| mean thing for me to say, but it was towards a troll in
| Ukrainian threads early in the conflict where people were
| asking for help on how to evacuate. The troll was telling
| them to accept the bullets Russia had for them. They
| weren't banned.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >It's one of the reasons places like r/politics became such
| an echo chamber dumpster fire.
|
| The day after election day 2016 in the US, it was actually
| possible to post non-leftist comments/articles in
| /r/politics. Basically, the mods and bot owners hadn't been
| given their new marching orders, and didn't know what to do.
| comboy wrote:
| If true then services mentioned by parent comment should
| show a very clear dip on that day. That would be
| interesting to see.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| I remember at some party I was talking to some guy who
| moderated something. He took it super serious and took
| everything a bit more serious than everyone else. I got the
| feeling from him that he held quite a low job. So it made sense
| to me that he would decide the desire to do something and have
| power somewhere so seriously. He talked about how hard it was
| to place clean.
|
| I kind of felt bad for him, but the thing is, without people
| like this we don't have Reddit. It just doesn't exist.
| Community forums and discords don't exist. Honestly, I find
| them annoying at times but at the same time I understand the
| need for them.
| bt4u wrote:
| kache_ wrote:
| reddit is awful this is why i prefer 4ch
| yoz-y wrote:
| TBH in the 90's most of forums I visited were also moderated by
| teenagers. If you build your community then you should be able
| to moderate it, as simple as that.
| dahfizz wrote:
| The internet was very different 30 years ago. What works for
| a niche, small community often does not scale.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| Why does this child's forum where people post silly AI-
| generated pictures need to "scale"?
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| And in other ways, reddit has much better moderation than
| either Twitter or Facebook
| [deleted]
| bitlax wrote:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/r45a5n/here_is_...
| sam1r wrote:
| >>> In some ways Reddit is worse than Facebook because it is
| influenced by anonymous entities with zero checks and balances.
|
| Couldn't one say the same about hacker news? Great quality
| content, from possibly anonymous profiles.
| [deleted]
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| VLM wrote:
| Reddit's admins are even worse people.
| ChildOfChaos wrote:
| This is the problem.
|
| I got banned from one of the main subreddits for asking an
| innocent question on something I knew nothing about, something
| kicked off, I heard about it first on the reddit, couldn't find
| much info about it as most content around it had already been
| removed online, questioned if it was really that bad as I could
| only find one bit of information and was instantly banned for
| supporting sexual abuse.
|
| I stupidly, avoided the ban by going to a different account as
| i felt I hadn't done anything wrong, after trying to speak to
| the mods about it but then Reddit managed to discover this and
| then my whole account was banned that i'd used for years on
| reddit.
|
| Insane. Now I just make new accounts every few months and
| access via VPN's, but I don't get involved in most discussions,
| only use it for when i want to ask someone a question.
| d23 wrote:
| I'm having difficulty seeing how this comment relates to the
| post.
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| It's relevant because the moderator in the OP is a teenager
| and I question if kids should be handed the reigns to
| moderate like this no questions asked.
| numpad0 wrote:
| They should be notified. He was not, from his claims.
| jstarfish wrote:
| If nobody is being harmed, why not. It's unpaid management
| experience.
|
| Giving kids responsibilities drives maturity.
| permalac wrote:
| Add /s or people will not understand
| colpabar wrote:
| In my experience, moderation can absolutely be harmful to
| the moderator's own mental health, because it involves
| removing the posts that aren't allowed. Porn, gore,
| insane political ramblings... a moderator is responsible
| for cleaning all that up. A 13 year old should probably
| not be doing it.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57088382
| linker3000 wrote:
| There's also the occasional direct or thinly-veiled
| threats of death, doxxing, tyre slashing or public
| stalking for removing an off-topic post where subby knows
| better.
| jstarfish wrote:
| In _my_ experience, it 's 13-year-olds that are _posting_
| the porn, gore and insane ramblings in the first place.
|
| It's also a volunteer gig. If it makes you uncomfortable,
| _stop doing it._
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| Yeah but Reddit isn't mum and dad's little cafe. You can
| think of it as a public newspaper. Anyone can ask for
| their own page titled whatever they want and curate that
| content to their own biases as they please. I could have
| nabbed the r/StableDiffusion page of the news paper and
| decided to only allow posts that smear StabilityAI.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| Sure, but at the same time that's a lot of power to give
| to a random teenager (or anyone, for that matter).
|
| Case in point, I dug into it the drama here a bit more,
| and it seems like the kid basically just handed control
| of the entire Stable Diffusion Reddit and Discord
| communities to the Stability AI corporation, no questions
| asked. That creates all sorts of conflicts of interest,
| and it seems to have been done against the wishes of the
| community itself.
| bawolff wrote:
| Its an internet community. If the mod team screws up you
| make a new one. The stakes are really low.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| That true to some extent, but it's also a bit like saying
| that if Facebook screws up we can just make a new
| Facebook and move everyone there. It's not that simple;
| there are huge network effects at play here.
|
| Other considerations:
|
| - Obviously from a purely technical perspective, making a
| new subreddit is easier than coding and deploying a new
| Facebook
|
| - It's less friction for a user to subscribe to a new
| subreddit than to sign up for a new website
|
| + The name of a subreddit can contribute to its
| popularity quite a bit. The community can make a new
| subreddit, but not a new /r/StableDiffusion
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| In many ways HN is worse than Reddit because comments get
| flagged way too easily here for being unpopular or off topic.
| That's what downvotes are for. It feels really gross and
| censored in a way Reddit never does. Bury it under downvotes
| fine on Reddit but it is never just flagged and removed for the
| tiniest reason.
|
| I do agree with you greatly though that Reddit mods have way
| too much power. The /r/movies subreddit is pretty garbage
| because of it. I wish they had just a daily thread for people
| to discuss movies. They refuse any sort of thing like this and
| persist their perverse love affair with movie posters.
| nullcaution wrote:
| > In many ways HN is worse than Reddit because comments get
| flagged way too easily.
|
| Ive never had that problem, but this is a tech and
| entrepreneurship forum and not a general form.
|
| >That's what downvotes are for
|
| If you get enough karma here you can down vote, 500 iirc.
| They do this so you can't create fake accounts to downvote
| people multiple times.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > In some ways Reddit is worse than Facebook because it is
| influenced by anonymous entities with zero checks and balances.
|
| The discourse in many subreddits is invisibly dictated by the
| moderators.
|
| It's not obvious when you browse posts because everything is
| organically coming from random people. However, moderators can
| entirely shape the conversation by only allowing posts that say
| what they want.
|
| In other words: The moderators are speaking through users, by
| selectively filtering out everyone else. Many subreddits are
| also famous for banning any commenters who say anything that
| doesn't support what the moderators want to see. The remaining
| unbanned users are effectively curated to echo what the
| moderators want you to see.
|
| Discord obviously has the same dynamics, but Discord makes it
| more obvious when you're switching between "servers". Reddit
| mashes it all into one feed that _feels_ like something
| organic.
|
| In this case, I suspect the core issue is that the person used
| the Stable Diffusion trademark, which resulted in Stable
| Diffusion playing the legal card. The correct response would
| have been to force a rename of this Discord (if legally
| obligated), though.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| > _The discourse in many subreddits is invisibly dictated by
| the moderators._
|
| If you haven't signed up for alerts on reveddit, odds are
| good you have no idea how many of your comments and posts
| have been silently removed:
| https://www.reveddit.com/y/<your_username>
| uncletammy wrote:
| > The discourse in many subreddits is invisibly dictated by
| the moderators.
|
| In the case of r/bitcoin, the largely invisible reddit
| censorship allowed for the effective capture of the coin's
| community and development. It was used to silence and remove
| those who believed BTC's primary use case should be cash. It
| was incredibly effective too.
|
| For further reading:
|
| https://medium.com/@johnblocke/a-brief-and-incomplete-
| histor...
|
| https://medium.com/@johnblocke/r-bitcoin-censorship-
| revisite...
| Scalene2 wrote:
| Best example is r/legaladvice. Good luck getting any advice
| on dealing with corrupt law enforcement.
| uncletammy wrote:
| Can you elaborate or give some context? I know nothing
| about this sub or it's history.
| widowlark wrote:
| I was banned from r/streetphotography with my first post
| because, despite it being a street photograph, the moderator
| on the clock at the time thought it was 'too derivative' - It
| was a permanent ban.
|
| Since then, I have taken tens of thousands of street photos,
| and the fact that I cannot post them on the most-used street
| photography subreddit is confusing and shitty.
| jrockway wrote:
| I got banned from r/AskReddit for posting the Chicago
| Transit Authority's customer service phone number, because
| it was "personal information". (In a thread about the CTA,
| no less. The rule is any comment that matches the regular
| expression /\d{3}-\d{4}/ is a permaban.)
|
| I also got kicked out of a Discord server I moderated
| because someone asked to be nagged about doing their
| homework, and I nagged them, and then someone in the server
| created fanart of my anime profile picture hitting their
| anime profile picture on the head with a magic wand, and I
| pinned it. I thought it was hilarious and I treasure it to
| this day. But that apparently was the last straw. ("There
| must have been some underlying issue," I hear you cry.
| There was. There were some differences of opinion on how to
| moderate the channel and the discord server. The community
| skewed about 60% female, and I was pretty quick to time
| stuff out like "women should be in the kitchen, not
| watching a stream" when the inevitable edgelord showed up
| to troll. This was apparently a controversial opinion, and
| all the other mods that would back me up on those decisions
| had long since left. I was pretty late to the giving up
| party, but I'm glad I eventually left. Even if not on my
| own terms ;)
|
| The TL;DR here is yeah, it's really easy to be a bad
| community manager, and people are pretty good at easy
| things. Stir in a spoonful of power tripping, and the
| results are predictable.
| practice9 wrote:
| Similar problems exists with Wikipedia and StackOverflow
| moderators. IMO people who become moderators just enjoy
| exercising their (often unchecked) power in these online
| communities.
| Brusco_RF wrote:
| When you frame it like that it becomes the tale as old as
| time; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
| caconym_ wrote:
| 100%. The reality of moderation on Reddit is absolutely
| horrifying, like flipping over a rock and finding a pile of
| decomposing rat carcasses underneath. It's unbelievable, for
| instance, how often comments going against the grain are
| "shadow removed".
| Brusco_RF wrote:
| I find "throttling" or "shadow banning" to be far more
| objectionable than simply banning / removing comments.
|
| At least if my post is deleted I can tell. But when
| companies artificially limit the reach of content they do
| not like, you might never know.
|
| Facebook openly admits to doing this. They are playing god
| by curating which information is worthy / unworthy of being
| seen, as well as presenting a warped view of reality to
| their users.
| caconym_ wrote:
| I'm not talking about deleted comments, I'm talking about
| _shadow_ deleted comments. The only way (without external
| tools, I guess) to know it 's happened to you is to
| notice a suspicious lack of engagement with something you
| posted, then visit the same thread in a private window
| and see that your comment isn't there. If you look on the
| account that posted it, you will still see it.
|
| You may not even have been aware that the above is a
| thing; most people aren't. But in my experience it
| accounts for a large fraction, if not the majority, of
| moderation actions against real human users on Reddit.
|
| Shadowbanning is very similar but IMO less insidious
| since it's a lot easier for human users to notice. I'm
| not sure if per-subreddit shadowbans are a thing, but I
| lean toward no because it has not happened to me (that
| I'm aware of).
| spookthesunset wrote:
| For forget you can get preemptively banned from many subs
| simply by posting in a "wrong think" sub the mods don't
| like.
|
| Granted you can just create a new account to route around
| it but still...
| Brusco_RF wrote:
| For a good laugh, drop a comment in /r/ChurchOfCovid and
| watch the auto-bans roll in for a few hours
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Yup. The biggest tip off that our response to Covid is
| basically a scam is the fact that you are absolutely not
| allowed to think anything beyond what "the experts" say.
| And not just any "expert" either, only ones that fall
| inline and spread doom and gloom.
|
| God damn I still cannot get over how many people continue
| to buy into this Covid nonsense.
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| Absolutely. And the front page is just full of this kind of
| specially curated content that aligns with the moderators'
| views. It's propaganda, basically. Question is whose?
| tayo42 wrote:
| who is pushing for antiwork to hit the frontpage
| constantly?
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| The issue is more that if you make a post critical of
| some of the ideas in antiwork, expect it to get removed
| within about 10 minutes. While no individual in
| particular is pushing for those posts to reach the front
| page, only posts that fit the groupthink stay alive long
| enough to do so.
| fortylove wrote:
| 100% agreed. The /r/cycling subreddit is unexpectedly one of
| the worst offenders, from what I've encountered. Many removed
| comments and posts. Anything remotely seen as critical of any
| aspect of cycling (even coming from avid cyclists!) is
| immediately removed.
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| On the other hand, nobody forces the feed on you if you
| choose your own community. Yes popular subs can be very
| political and biased but it doesn't mean you have to join
| them.
|
| On reddit, you can totally avoid bans and still say
| something. On Facebook, your words and your whole account
| have no value if the algorithm decides you spoke a 'no no
| word'.
|
| Facebook feed is entirely controlled by the algorithm and
| that algorithm is controlled by the people at Facebook, the
| reddit feed can be controlled by you. That difference alone
| makes Reddit a little bit better than Facebook.
|
| Getting banned on Facebook is extremely easy, I got banned
| for quoting someone's comment and replying with 'ok' and
| unfortunately I'm not kidding. So far on reddit, haven't
| gotten any bans or warnings and I have always kept my
| discussions civil.
|
| Facebook wants conformity, it doesn't slap you on the wrist
| if you do something that Zuckerberg doesn't approve, it
| totally takes your voice away for a long time.
|
| I deleted my 10 year old Facebook account because the
| censorship was getting really crazy. Somebody could give you
| death threats and your comments would be the one getting
| deleted by Facebook, that's how bad it got near the end of
| 2020.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _On the other hand, nobody forces the feed on you if you
| choose your own community._
|
| That's only true if you stay small. If the subreddit gains
| traction, it will be taken from you if you don't moderate
| in a way that suits the whims of the power mod / admin
| cabal. They may take it from you under a flimsy pretext
| even if you're doing a good job, simply because they want
| to add your subreddit to their dominion.
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| Yes, no denying that but at least you have the ability to
| reach the point.
|
| Facebook on the other hand finishes before something can
| even start because the algorithm checks every single word
| that you post, unlike Reddit.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| This seems like arguing whether chicken shit or pig shit
| smells worse.
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| That was a really bad comparison.
|
| Moderators on Reddit can be biased in different areas,
| they might let a comment pass or have a nervous breakdown
| over something they don't like. It's not clear and never
| will be but you still have the freedom.
|
| Facebook algorithm does not miss. It does not overlook
| things or understand context. All it knows is someone
| said something they're not supposed to and that is the
| difference.
|
| I'll take Reddit over Facebook anytime of the day because
| at least on Reddit, I can say controversial things (if
| any) on my own feed without the fear of the algorithm
| deleting it and banning me for a month where I have no
| voice, only a threat to be confirming to Facebook ideals
| that I have no idea what they are.
|
| So yeah, both are censuring but Reddit allows more
| freedom.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| It's a good analogy because they're both terrible. You
| can fly under the radar on reddit or facebook by staying
| small or using innuendo, but why subject yourself to
| either? Whatever relative merit one may have vs the other
| is irrelevant since neither is worth using. In both
| cases, you are only as free as a medieval peasant; "free"
| to say what you like as long as the lord or his
| informants don't hear you.
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| My utopia does not have Facebook or Reddit but whatever
| it has, is closer to Reddit than Facebook. So I'm ready
| to pick the better of the two options at the moment.
|
| I do condemn censorship in all forms (unless specific
| laws are being followed) but after fighting against all
| the platforms for a voice, I see Reddit as the best
| option for civil discourse. Hackernews is also very close
| to reddit and we know the model works very well.
|
| Wherever I am, I'm always looking for good discussions
| (like this thread for example) and I'm glad that I can do
| it more freely on Reddit and HN than I ever could on
| Twitter or Facebook, hence my comments.
| Brusco_RF wrote:
| I spent a large part of my formative years on Reddit and I
| agree with everything you just said. I don't know how to fix
| the issue, but I have some ideas.
|
| One would be a "mod action audit." Each subreddit, or perhaps
| each moderator, would have a score indicating what % of
| comments are removed. Some random chunk of the removed
| content could be reviewed by auditors to determine what %
| were just spam and what came from legitimate users.
|
| This way when I see a community where >50% of content is
| removed, I know that what I'm seeing is not organic.
| Domenic_S wrote:
| Slashdot had (has?) meta-moderation, where you are randomly
| selected to re-moderate decisions
| cercatrova wrote:
| 92 of top 500 subreddits controlled by same 5 people
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23173018
| bawolff wrote:
| I'd rather have unpaid megalomaniacs and teenagers (read:
| people who care) than a faceless souless corporate bureaucracy.
|
| However both suck in very real but different ways.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| You don't have to pick one or the other. I quit both.
| seydor wrote:
| I wish it was teenagers. Reddit is terrified of old moderators
| leaving so they allow them free reign with zero accountability
| or even a way for users to dispute anything. They re probably
| having a hard time finding young people (they prefer discord)
| and are stuck with the same aging people moderating for 15
| years. And those have become way worse megalomaniacs over time
|
| Evidently, teenagers are not the problem
| datalopers wrote:
| HN is moderated by upvotes/downvotes in a similar fashion.
| Hivemind floats to the top the most mundane of viewpoints.
|
| imo, we need to eliminate upvotes/downvotes and just have a
| single flag/report type system for vitriolic content.
| vlunkr wrote:
| Getting downvoted is not at all the same as having comments
| deleted, or getting banned, which is incredibly common on
| some subreddits.
|
| Also not giving new users access to downvotes hopefully means
| that those downvoting are somewhat good citizens.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| The downvote (for me) is too ambiguous. Without a couple
| words specifically about why, it often (to me) comes off
| as, "I didn't like what you said, I'm too lazy to reply, so
| I'll down vote you." It's hard to take DV'ing seriously
| when there's zero context. How many times have we read a
| sub-comment similar to, "I'm not sure why you're being
| downvoted..." Nuff said.
|
| Frankly, I can't be bothered to downvote. I've seen plenty
| of questionable things, and I just keep scrolling. I'd
| rather save my energy for upvotes. I'd rather focus on the
| positive. Let someone else play HN Police if that fulfills
| some kinky need they have.
| vlunkr wrote:
| IMO downvoting is useful for comments that don't warrant
| a reply, or where replying would only encourage more bad
| behavior.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| I miss the days when people would almost always leave a
| comment when downvoting. That was back before you could
| "undown" a fat-finger downvote.
| datalopers wrote:
| I agree it's not the same as mods literally removing
| content or banning users but it still yields the same
| result. People observe what type of thought gets upvotes
| and repeat those views/opinions over and over. This of
| course is exactly how reddit works too outside of mods.
|
| > hopefully means that those downvoting are somewhat good
| citizens.
|
| Definitely not. It only takes a few flags on HN to
| completely remove something from the front-page. It only
| takes a few downvotes to grey it nothingness.
| Brusco_RF wrote:
| Lets not kid ourselves, the main reason HN is much higher
| quality than Reddit is because of the users. It could all
| change tomorrow if they find out about us.
|
| People forget that Reddit used to look a lot like HN does
| today in like 2006-10 before the Digg exodus. Today Reddit
| is almost entirely kids.
| vlunkr wrote:
| Also the quantity of users and comments. You can still
| see comments that have been downvoted by scrolling a bit.
| On Reddit, unpopular comments will be buried and require
| extra clicks to access.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| Anyone can become a Facebook influencer and own pages that will
| be seen on everyone's news feed. Anyone can moderate Facebook
| pages and groups. There are few differences. It's web 2.0 by
| design.
|
| I'm now over 30 years old, but I started being a mod/admin on
| online spaces when I was about 13. Back then it was IRC,
| several BBS's, flash chat and flash games.
|
| If I do a total count, I personally supervise over 250k people
| in Facebook groups alone. Add to that the fact that anyone can
| comment on Facebook pages and you get an even higher number
| (millions).
|
| I do it out of love for my communities but I know people who do
| it just for the power. You'd be surprised at how many pages
| there about major franchises that share the same admin/mods
| with the sole goal of controlling what is said there. I know
| people who create a page the minute a new trailer for a product
| or franchise comes out without even being interested
| themselves.
| shmde wrote:
| > When you realise Reddit is moderated by unpaid megalomaniacs
|
| True, there was a recent post on r/India talking about an IMF
| twitter post talking about India's projected GDP growth and the
| user was banned from the subreddit because it showed India in
| good light. This is just one instance, there are lots of big
| subreddits out there having the tag of being an Official
| subreddit which are nothing more than propaganda machines.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| A minor? How do kids learn to talk all smart like that? I was
| real dumb when I was under 18.
| manifoldgeo wrote:
| I think Discord's use of the word server is misleading, and it
| leads people to think they own something when they don't. Discord
| owns it and can pull the rug out from under you at any time,
| regardless of how much hard work you put into building a
| community, and that hurts.
|
| I understand that "server" is an abstract term and just means
| "something which provides a service", but most other uses of the
| word relate to something owned by the person operating it. E.g.,
| if I run a Matrix server instance, it's mine to administer,
| manage, destroy, etc. If I start a Discord "server" it's a
| glorified chat room or set of chat rooms owned and maintained by
| the company.
|
| Language is powerful and helps shape our world, and by redefining
| "server" to mean a segmented part of someone else's website, it's
| another nail in the coffin for the concept of real ownership.
| superkuh wrote:
| > So Discord can just take servers from people and give them away
| to corporations without asking?
|
| He never had a "server". Just like no one has a Facebook
| "server". Discord is a corporation not a person. Communities run
| by corporate services are different than servers run by human
| persons. You give up everything when you don't actually host your
| own server(s) for communicating with your community.
| danaris wrote:
| Individual Discord communities are, and always have been,
| called "servers", despite the fact that they are entirely
| logical/digital entities and have no particular correspondence
| with actual physical servers (the way IRC servers do).
| refulgentis wrote:
| Is this a distinction without a difference?
|
| Meaning, it seems eminently reasonable if I was 16, started a
| Disney Discord, got a verified badge for it, then Disney
| pointed out the delicacies of Discord handing the Official
| Disney Discord to a minor, it seems to be a reasonable
| compromise to make the official Disney Discord officially
| Disney's, and allow the 16 year old to still have the secret
| chats, etc.
| tryauuum wrote:
| There's difference, physical ownership of the server would
| mean no company would be able to transfer ownership with a
| click of a mouse.
|
| Even if transfer of rights looks reasonable, it's better to
| live in a world where such transfer is made through law and
| not through company managers will.
| scraptor wrote:
| A more reasonable compromise might be to give disney contol
| over the discord.gg/disney namespace but leave the existing
| server and it's community unmodified under the control of
| the people who actually built it.
| codeflo wrote:
| In my opinion that was a very clever naming scheme to target
| the TeamSpeak crowd. In gaming communities, having "your own
| server" has always come with a sense of pride.
| superkuh wrote:
| Exactly. This intentional lie by Discord is to abuse the
| connotations associated with the idea of having a "server"
| that existed with teamspeak/mumble/etc. But since it's not
| actually a server in any way, just a service, users act
| shocked when Discord takes away their community on a whim.
| kuschku wrote:
| > and always have been, called "servers",
|
| That's not correct, originally they were called "Guilds",
| which is also what the API and code still use today.
| [deleted]
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| That may be true in the technical sense, but discord uses the
| term "server" to refer to the collection of channels (text and
| voice) that it allows you to create. i.e. individual discord
| communities are called "servers".
|
| It might not square with the traditional hardware definition of
| the the word, but it's being used correctly here.
| Atheros wrote:
| And that technical distinction doesn't matter right up until
| the moment it does, which is why we're here today. While the
| distinction is obvious to most HN users, I would bet that it
| isn't to many Discord users. When Discord users create a
| 'server', I would bet that many of them do not understand how
| few rights they have, specifically because they are being
| purposely mislead by Discord.
| nemothekid wrote:
| A Discord "server" is a colloquial term for the community
| space. The nitpick is meaningless, I could have an AWS
| "server", but at the end of the day we both know it's a virtual
| instance that sits on an actual server.
| freeplay wrote:
| Unless your AWS server is a dedicated host...
| cowtools wrote:
| It's deceitful for discord to use that language because it
| implies some level of independence.
|
| A VPS service like AWS goes out of their way to specify that
| it is a "virtual server". the product they provide is
| analagous to real server hardware and largely interchangable
| with other server hosts.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| I'm guessing that by choosing to respect the wishes of artists,
| stability has formed direct lines of contact with institutions
| (understandably) in favor of the status quo for art. Politics, to
| a degree.
|
| I respect the initial decision, but this is all a bit much.
|
| (pure speculation btw)
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