Let's talk about Orlando

a_calder · 37分前

/u/spez, why has Reddit not put more effort into promoting /r/live posts? I find them much more useful than some mega-thread that is difficult to keep track of.

Can you make it easier for mods to link to /r/live threads?
Could you create a method for merging two live threads if they are the same subject (and the creators want to merge them)?

BlarpUM · 48分前

What's Reddit's policy on posting pictures of events like this as they're unfolding?

ghostsnstufx · 46分前

Is there an official response from the /r/news mods? Do we know what was removed and WHY, or was it just everything?

Metallics · 48分前

Remove r/news from default subs

thebaron2 · 39分前

A few posts were removed incorrectly

Isn't this the understatement of the century? The amount of DELETED comments in those threads was insane and it turned out many of them didn't come close to violating any policy. Identifying where to go to donate blood?

We have investigated

Will this be a transparent investigation or is this all you guys have to say on the matter?

it is never acceptable to harass users or moderators

While I agree with the sentiment, it's really bad form, IMO, to include this here, in this post. Part of the disdain for how this was handled included the /r/news mods blaming the users for their behavior.

This is a responsibility we take seriously.

This is hard to take seriously if theres a) no accountability, b) no transparency, and c) no acknowledgement of how HORRIBLY this whole incident was handled. This post effectively comes down to "One mod crossed the line. And by the way, don't harass mods ever."

We–Reddit Inc, moderators, and users–all have a duty to ensure access to timely information is available.

What happens when you - Reddit Inc and moderators (I'd argue that regular users do not have a duty to provide access to info) - fail in this duty? If it's a serious responsibility, as you claim, are there repercussions or is there any accountability, at all, when the system fails?

*edit: their/there correction

hsmith711 · 45分前

So when a news event happens and a megathread is created.. initial comments/reactions get voted to the top.

Any new information and updates may or may not be edited into the main post.. and is usually just going to be a buried comment.

Every post at all related to the same news event is deleted.

In other words... 30 minutes after something happens, Reddit is literally the WORST place on the internet to get news. The only thing in front of you will be a single post that the event is happening and "best" or "top" will be the most popular comments from the first 30 minutes and "new" will be ignorant reactions.

That doesn't seem like a good idea at all. If there were a subreddit with moderators that knew the difference between "contributing to the discussion" and not.. and would just remove 100% of parent comments that don't contribute to the discussion... that would be a good start.

Edit: To those saying livethreads fix the problem.. I agree they are an improvement.. but that still doesn't explain why new articles/stories with new information are automatically deleted just because a megathread or live thread exists. How many hours after an event until new stories with new information are allowed as new content? 1 hour? 3 hours? 24 hours?

Simply put, if I wanted the most up to date information about this story and several others in the recent past, news.google.com or any other actual news site was far easier to find what I was looking for than Reddit. Reddit is just the best place to find out how the reddit (or specific subreddit) hivemind is reacting to a particular story.

Duplicate news stories muddy the water... but removing all posts that have anything to do with a topic limits the amount of information that can be found about an event on this website.

cheald · 30分前

It's pretty bold to say that there is no evidence of censorship when community undeletion logs pretty clearly show mods removing posts which contain nothing except links to related stories or headlines (ie, "FBI: Orlando Gunman 'May Have Leanings' Toward Radical Islamic Terrorism"). I watched completely appropriate posts (and even entire sub-threads) disappear between page refreshes.

It was abundantly clear to me watching yesterday that there was an agenda at play to shape the narrative in the /r/news threads. The moderator agendas in certain subreddits have been a running joke for a while now, but after that display yesterday, I have zero confidence in the ability of the /r/news moderation team to objectively moderate the sub. Locking threads because they're getting a lot of attention is a horrific way to manage such a scenario - saying "we can't control this, so we're going to just shut it down" is hard to read as anything except censorship. Reddit has plenty of community tools to help curate discussion content, and a bunch of people voting in a way that you don't agree with isn't necessarily brigading.

Regarding the "rogue moderator", name and shame and point out what they did, why what they did was inappropriate, and any internal policies the team has taken to prevent that from happening again. There's a moderation log - make it public, so that when content is removed, people can see when, by whom, and possibly why. Maybe even consider something like HN's "showdead" flag to permit readers willing to brave the dregs of the comments to see things that have been removed, so as to improve accountability and diminish the capacity for moderators to operate in secret. You have pretty damning evidence that the current system allows for abuses that are withing your technical means to mitigate.

Shame on everyone involved in suppressing conversation that didn't support their biases yesterday.

adadadafafafafa · 31分前

Live threads are the best place for news to break and for the community to stay updated on the events. We are working to make this more timely, evident, and organized.

Is it just me, or do live threads suck? They're fine to hang out on after you've read news articles and other reddit threads to get yourself up to date. But as a primary source of info they're just too... unfiltered and empty.

If you come to reddit 2 hours after an incident has started, a normal reddit post will have (a) a link to a good article covering the scenario, and if the primary link is insufficient or inaccurate, the top comment is likely to be a better source, (b) several top comments with context and discussion, pretty representative about what reddit and a chunk of the world are thinking at the time (c) a fairly responsive bubbling up for new information, along with a "new" sort option to check the latest.

While on the other hand, a "live" thread will just be random and often inane comments, lots of repetitive comments, and zero attention on all the background info its assumed "everybody already knows"

istorical · 40分前

We have seen the accusations of censorship. We have investigated, and beyond the posts that are now restored, have not found evidence to support these claims.

If you don't call thousands of comments being deleted because a moderation team doesn't like them censorship, what do you call it? Oh that's right, you call anything you don't like brigading. Because it's not possible to read and comment in multiple subreddits, you're only allowed to have and share opinions in your own home turf.

Reddit of 2016: Non-circlejerk opinions aren't allowed in any subreddit. Expressing a contrary view is brigading. There's no such thing as censorship, the mods are always right, and remember, we've always been at war with Eastasia!

Edit. Since I'm getting a bit of traction, this is the real problem as I see it:

A sub like /r/news normally has a consensus that A is right and B is wrong.
A big thread appears and people who wouldn't normally comment or vote show up. This is normal. You might normally lurk in most subs, but when something big happens you want to participate. It's not brigading.
Some comments in support of B start popping up, and gasp, they get upvoted! This angers the mods!
This is the part where the mods start deleting shit like crazy because opinions they don't like are actually prevailing. The public discourse is shifting towards an unacceptable direction. So they exercise editorial control over public opinion. What gives them this right?
Reddit users rebel and get super pissed off.
Admins don't admit that the mods did anything wrong, they victimblame people who had their comments or posts deleted, and instead divert attention from the manipulation of discussion using "brigading", "death threats", and "harassment" as a scapegoat and boogeyman.

We've been seeing this time and time again: If 3% of users are brigading, or harassing, or doxxing, or death-threating because they believe in B, then Reddit admins and mods decide it's OK to delete all comments that express support of B.

As these things keep happening, citizens of the internet are learning that Reddit isn't a forum for open and earnest discussion of ideas, it's a place where you can only say what's acceptable to mods and admins. This isn't about harassment, or hate speech, or doxxing, or brigading, it's about moderation teams shutting down opinions they don't agree with.

D0cR3d · 44分前

So what happens to regular sticky posts. A few of my subreddits use sticky posts as a gathering of information. Can only mods make sticky aka announcement posts? What if a news info like E3 for the gaming subs, a user makes a post first, and we want to honor that by making a collective discussion thread? Are we not able to do that and we as mods would have to create our own announcement post just to sticky it?

Examples when we would sticky a users post:

They create a really detailed helpful post with information, and we want to direct users to it
Mods are asleep and a user gets the drop on a game update, or E3 coverage, or some other bit of information. We like to reduce redundant threads, so direct discussion to a single thread and make this a stickied megathread.
An important new story breaks out (current event) and the mods want to sticky that for visibility.

Users kinda get angry if mods remove threads to make their own, especially when users get a big drop on the mods in terms of time. Not exactly the best PR for us to remove a post and make our own just so we can sticky it to get users attention.

So what are we supposed to do? Make a announcement thread with a link to the users thread and lock our thread just as a redirect?

youramazing · 43分前

This is all nice, but none of it addresses the real issue which is abuse among the mod teams here. I don't have any solutions, but there should be a checks and balance system put into place on some level to protest actions of a specific moderator. For example, if one or more mods are censoring discussion, can we not raise those concerns somewhere higher than that specific sub's modmail? Because as shown over the weekend, they will not treat those concerns in a serious or fair manner.

If you don't do anything to address this issue, then you can't say that you are really doing anything to prevent what happened with Orlando again.

MisterTruth · 46分前

Very simple rules: If you are a default sub and you participate in censorship, you lose your default sub status. Mods of default subs who harass users, threaten users, or tell users to kill themselves are demodded and possibly banned depending on severity.

Edit: Apparently there are a lot of users on here who consider removing thoughts and ideas they don't agree with for political purposes not only acceptable, but proper practice. There is a difference with removing individual hate speech posts and blanketly setting up an automod to remove all instances of references to a group of people. For example, a comment "it's being reported that the shooter is Muslim and may have committed this in the name of isis" should never be removed unless a sub has an explicit policy that there can be no mention of these words.

CowrawlAndFheonex · 46分前

Something about "One moderator" sounds kind of bullshit. You're telling me one moderator completely censored multiple threads at a very high rate? Sounds like a lot of work for only one person. Or are we talking about the one moderator sending death threats? Because that doesn't solve the problem.

HordeOfDoom · 43分前

You're a content aggregator; contributors are the content, not you, not the moderators.

If your policies continue to promote moderators, admins, and advertisers at the cost of the contributors, your business will die. You need to change.

In particular, Reddit's algorithm's as-is are, simply speaking, fucked. News is slow to propagate through the site, suppressed by algorithms, and heavily biased. When I find out something from the mainstream media before it hits the front page on Reddit, you've lost my readership.

mobiusstripsearch · 31分前

Their policy includes removing duplicate posts to focus the conversation in one place, and removing speculative posts until facts are established.

They deleted and banned a lot more than this, and /r/news was not the only offending subreddit. /r/Worldnews banned the story as a "local news story". /r/news banned posts about blood donations and anything that mentioned that the killer was Muslim. (This is something that has never been done when the killer is White.)

It already sounds like you're dodging blame by saying that this is just "their policy" at /r/news. The whole issue is that a default subreddit like /r/news, which controls such a huge portion of traffic at reddit, is able to censor, delete, insult, promote, over-moderate, under-moderate, or ban without any oversight or action. Is /r/news going to change their policies? -- it's great that you're talking to them and "trying to understand," but what about the thousands of users who want something new? Do we all go to a new sub, cut our losses, and accept that the promoted, default subs have no effective check? Do we have to make a new sub every time a subreddit displeases us? Why should /r/news remain the legitimate news subreddit? Are you listening to the concerns of /r/news subscribers, or just the mods?

Without rushing to judgement: it sounds like you really don't have anything new to say.

tcp1 · 21分前

/u/spez,

Why can't you simply come out and admit that Reddit and a good portion of mods have a certain bias and agenda, that this is NOT an unbiased/uncensored news site, and let the users decide?

We accept that Fox News is conservative, MSNBC is liberal, and CNN is a schizophrenic meth addict. And that's OK, because we know the context. We know what we're getting when we read Daily Kos or Newsmax - on either side.

Let's just call it what it is and say that Reddit and its leadership is attuned to a certain crowd that is hypersensitive to race/gender politics and prefers to reject what they may perceive as overentitled "mainstream" American demographics and be honest with each other?

What happened in /r/news yesterday was not an "accident" and the quicker you guys admit that, the more people will just be OK with what Reddit is and know how large a grain of salt to take with any news events.

You can pretend the "kill yourself" mod was an errant outlier, but those of us who have been on Reddit more than a few months know that just is not true.

ReluctantPawn · 20分前

What an absolute garbage, non-explanation, non-apology. Also, what a catastrophe of damage control. So you (contrary to overwhelming evidence and first hand accounts of thousands on this site) found that no censorship occurred? A few posts were removed incorrectly? One moderator is to blam? But also oh the poor mods are the victims here? Spez, your /r/news mods have lost all credibility and you need to clean house. You are now losing all credibility yourself by making bullshit excuses for them and protecting them. Don't do it. It's time to finally own up to what happened (and is happening) to a once-good website, apologize and take drastic action to correct things. Do you think there is any chance at all this would have happened on 2005 reddit? 2008 reddit? 2010 reddit? This place is going to end up like digg if you don't make changes. People are already searching for alternatives within the site and to the site as a whole. The writing is on the wall and you keep digging yourself a deeper hole.

2dilatedpupils · 44分前

You are seriously telling us you found no instances of censorship in the whole /r/news fiasco? I call bullshit.

We are working on a change to the r/all algorithm to promote more diversity in the feed, which will help provide more variety of viewpoints and prevent vote manipulation.

Just so /r/the_donald doesnt keep reaching /r/all all the time?

SixBiscuit · 42分前

Stop using amateur, inexperienced, volunteers to moderate and curate your main subreddits with 8 million users and actually pay someone that knows something about journalism to moderate your news subreddit, someone that knows something about politics to moderate your political subreddit, etc.

You get what you pay for and you mostly get drama loving power trippers.

KSBadger · 35分前

Many of you use Reddit as your primary source of news, and we have a duty to provide access to timely information during a crisis. This is a responsibility we take seriously.

Prove it.

A few posts were removed incorrectly

Way more than a few. You're out of touch.

have not found evidence to support these claims.

sooooo out of touch

Whether you agree with r/news’ policies or not, it is never acceptable to harass users or moderators. Expressing your anger is fine. Sending death threats is not. We will be taking action against users, moderators, posts, and communities that encourage such behavior.

The mods were totally the victims in all of this.

We are working with r/news to understand the challenges faced and their actions taken throughout, and we will work more closely with moderators of large communities in future times of crisis.

Translation: You're going to stall and hope people forget.

Until you produce tangible results like removing /r/news moderators, announcements like this will be seen as nothing more than hand waves at a larger problem. You're just paying lip service to your pissed off users and most people can see that. If you continue to ignore your audience and cater to a few power users this site will go the way of Digg.

BigIrishBalls · 21分前

I'm not on any side politically. But when you have to hear about this from the Donald Trump subreddit, one who's fairly controversial on here, I think it points out just how bad this censoring is.

Every post was removed. Vast amounts of comments were removed. There's an agenda on a lot of subreddits here that doesn't suit the very nature of reddit. We want to discuss real things, without having a fear of being banned. To have our voices silenced or be called racist for mentioning facts is idiotic. The mods fucked up. There's literally no other way of looking at that. News should not be a default sub. It's censoring news and this isn't the first time. Censoring goes against the very purpose of news.

I'm sure this might get buried, but I want my voice heard. This is disappointing to say the least and your dismissal of it is ridiculous.

druglawyer · 44分前

A few posts were removed incorrectly, which have now been restored.

Understatement of the year award, right there.

We have investigated, and beyond the posts that are now restored, have not found evidence to support these claims.

And I'm sure we all believe you. /s

Edit: The initial excuse for the "kill it with fire" approach to the event that the mods took was brigading. There's even an admin in the thread confirming that brigading was happening. Please provide some actual evidence to that effect, or post a retraction of that excuse. And also please explain how brigading, in your view, differs from large numbers of people climbing into an /r/news thread regarding a major event.

BlueSignRedLight · 44分前

This sounds like a very long post to say that other than banning an obvious sockpuppet, nothing is going to be done. So business as usual then?

mafaldo · 33分前

We have seen the accusations of censorship. We have investigated, and beyond the posts that are now restored, have not found evidence to support these claims.

https://i.sli.mg/mbleSK.png

https://i.sli.mg/Oxshsf.png

http://imgur.com/qRWIlGM

Deleted comments in red

So this doesn't count as censorship?

ABCosmos · 42分前

Many people argue that the biggest issue with Reddit is that the moderators of default subreddits like /r/news have too much power.

Is this concern on the radar of the admins at Reddit? Is there any theory on how to handle this better than reactionary, after the fact, and on a case by case basis? This seems like it will happen over and over.. the defaults are too important to be controlled by mods who tell redditors to kill themselves.

thatpuck · 33分前

What will you do about the user /u/rnews_mod which is a shared account for the moderators which tried to spin yesterday's censorship to about not caring for yesterday's shooting?

/u/rnews_mod:

Only comments breaking our rules are being deleted. If you think its more productive to cry about censorship then it is to discuss this horrifying event, we suggest you try another subreddit.

Why are there even shared mod accounts,? Don't you see how this could easily be abused by moderator teams so they never take responsibility for their own actions.

harps86 · 45分前

Moderators can make or break this website. Certain ones overstep their boundary and yesterday was a prime example.

fearachieved · 29分前

I don't like the sound of this:

We are working on a change to the r/all algorithm to promote more diversity in the feed, which will help provide more variety of viewpoints and prevent vote manipulation.

Sort of has an "affirmative action" ring to it, does it not?

Sounds like this may open the door to greater censorship.

matesc · 44分前

How are you going to prevent the mod from just making a new account, it doesn't seem that unlikely that that had already happened since their account was only 4 months old and they are clearly friends with the rest of the mods at /r/news since they weren't instantly unmodded.

KytoCSGO · 42分前

It's absolutely unacceptable that the mods were deleting every single post about donating blood in Orlando. What they did could have caused someone to die because they didn't have enough blood for the person. When there's an emergency like that, they should make one of the threads about a blood drive a sticky, not fucking delete it. Admin intervention needs to happen in that sub.

iEpicsaurus · 20分前

Hello u/spez, you stated that a few posts were removed incorrectly however this is not the case. Thousands of posts were removed for not reason (they did not violate any rules) and asked for fellow redditors to donate blood to local centers etc... we ask you to be transparent in your public statement and not give us some nonsense which is obviously false and you are in full damage control.

Furthermore, several mods on r/news lied about the mod in question and stated that this individual was not an alt account and later the mod in question revealed the removed mod's official account.

We, the community, are appalled to how your response and the moderation team has handled the situation and are asking the whole moderation team to be replaced. This was not an isolated incident with only one moderator, instead, the whole moderation team failed the community.

45分前

[deleted]

lifelongfreshman · 36分前

There is no excuse for the raw number of removed comments, period. I don't care how many duplicates there were, entire sections were graveyards because of direct moderator behavior.

There's a difference between enforcing your rules and stifling your userbase, and the moderation team crossed that line in a bad way yesterday. There needs to be some protection for the users from moderator abuse on this scale.

dltbgyd · 34分前

We have investigated, and beyond the posts that are now restored, have not found evidence to support these claims.

What? Aside from the post that were censored, which you have now uncensored , there was no censorship? It doesn't matter that you uncensored them, the fact remains that they were censored at the time, which is the problem.

That's like saying "aside from the 50 people who died, no one died"

MAXSquid · 46分前

Please put in a better system to report mods.

tisgdayfc · 44分前

Is the mod actually gone or just that one account?

RMAR_Devastator · 43分前

What happened in /r/news was a total meltdown and honestly the slate needs to be wiped clean. This issue has blown way out of proportion and I believe you, the admins, need to take action against the moderators and find replacements for them. Barring all the accusations of censorship, the mods there clearly aren't qualified for something of that caliber given their status as a default sub.

MisterJohnson87 · 46分前

Unsure on how you came to the conclusion that censorship wasn't an issue? Can you clarify please?

designer_of_drugs · 23分前

Hey look, it's spez minimizing bias and coming to show what a good job the mods do and how neutral and good (and worth investment) reddit is. Sticky posts are now called announcements! This will obviously address the problems reddit doesn't have! But remember, what happened in Orlando is horrible, so in comparison this was just a little hiccup. Err, or hypothetically would have been a hiccup if reddit had bias problems. Which it doesn't.

It sounds like spez has a PR lackey permanently installed in his ass.

Tomes2789 · 35分前

We have seen the accusations of censorship. We have investigated, and beyond the posts that are now restored, have not found evidence to support these claims.

What about the NUMEROUS (too numerous to even count) people who were both banned AND muted by the mods of /r/news for posting stories and/or comments that were IN NO WAY hateful/bigoted/etc.., but were instead just the facts?

Just because these facts seemed to be against the political ideologies of the mods of /r/news, they were removed, and the posters were immediately banned AND muted.

How is this not censorship?

This goes beyond the one mod who told a user to kill himself.

iReign_x · 37分前

Clarity/transparency is something reddit promised, this would be a good opportunity to get moderators of the default subs to employ as well.

In a high profile situation like this with emotions running high, people want to know what happened and /r/news while may have been acting within its rules and boundaries, failed. It failed to settle things. Reddit knows the internet very well; once something gets out, it will be twisted and changed by people who are ignorant , didn't check sources, or didn't read the information properly; they were more worried about multiple posts about people breaking some minor rules (the major rules being broken is understandable) over clarity of their actions, which if they had explained in a proper way (subreddit announcement, near the beginning of this mess) would have quickly diminished the situation. Comment graveyards and deleted threads do not calm tens of thousands of people who are flustered looking for information on a tragedy.

I believe the admins should set better standards for moderators of default subreddits, including clarity.

RootUser · 26分前

The problem with restoring posts which were incorrectly removed is that there was a critical time during the US East coast a.m. where users were left with no resources in r/news and instead had to turn to other subreddits for information. The damage was already done.

I don't have a solution for what happened, but if r/news is going to be a default subreddit, it should be held to a different standard than other subreddits. That means when critical information is being shared in a default subreddit that has been represented to the users as a center for receiving critical information, there's an objective treatment of that information.

Simply restoring posts is not a fix for the mistreatment of critical, time-sensitive information. There is no fixing that kind of mistreatment after-the-fact. The only thing that can restore the trust of users in that case is ensuring that it does not occur again, and what I have read here does not satisfy that, in my opinion.

Actual_Dragon_IRL · 22分前

We have seen the accusations of censorship. We have investigated, and beyond the posts that are now restored, have not found evidence to support these claims.

You investigated yourselves and found no evidence of doing something wrong, I'm so fucking shocked.

People should be able to express hatred of terrorists no matter what religion they subscribe to.

thebedshow · 37分前

So the mods who censored all the information are cool guys and the real problem is those darn other subs who bothered them for their massive censorship campaign! Those poor guys, how can they continue after being bothered with mean comments due to their planned and executed campaign of censorship because it didn't fit their narrative. It must be rough being them. Mean comments are almost as bad as mass murder!

NotWTFAdvisor · 40分前

A few posts were removed incorrectly

"lol"

happy_tractor · 46分前

All r/news moderators must be removed immediately and replaced. Such blatant censorship cannot be allowed to remain or Reddit will no longer be the front page of anything

Jesus_Faction · 47分前

/r/news should not be a default sub

jagdos · 24分前

I think one of the big issues here is the level of transparency. Entering a big thread where the top comments are [DELETED] is just a very frustrating user experience, as it prompts the question WHY was it deleted. If the mod team believes something should be removed, why not just collapse them like severly downvoted comments are?

-run · 47分前

This thread will go well.

Flootersy · 39分前

So you investigated yourselves on censorship and found no evidence of wrongdoing? Funny that. Everyone that was there knows that isn't true in the slightest.

Pokatz · 14分前

Am I alone in thinking that no posts should be censored or deleted, no matter how awful or cruel or offensive. Is that not the point of the voting system. I was under the impression that anything goes, and if it isnt what people like they will downvote it, is that not what freedom of speech is. Sure some people will say horrible provoking things, but is it not better to let them state their opinion and let it be discussed and dissmissed by peers rather than be hidden and censored by some higher power in the community. People have opinions, good or bad, and in a free society they should be allowed to voice them. That is how we become a better group as a whole, we should learn other opinions, deconstruct them, see where the other person comes from, and educate and share our points of view, sweeping things under the rug just hides things instead of adressing them, and in the long run will create more problems, just my two cents.

Tacosaurus73 · 47分前

the defaults need a look at

RobotRock37 · 33分前

"Nothing to see here, go back to memeing or whatever the kids call it"

Reddit Inc.

jeremycinnamonbutter · 34分前

I thought that Reddit would self sort itself with the comments with the voting system. Downvoted comments get buried. Why should there be moderators actively censoring these comments, without any standards, when news breaks and comments are purely reactive of people? Very flawed system.

AlexFaceHead · 14分前

Reddit has become such a massive joke.

I used to enjoy this site, and, as /u/spez mentioned, used it as a source of news. It's sad, because I legitimately believe it used to host quality content with, for the most part, genuine people providing said content.

I can't say the same anymore. And completely honestly, it's pathetic. The staff is pathetic, the moderators of some of the largest communities are pathetic, and I am pathetic for even visiting this terrible excuse for a "front page of the internet" and supporting its nonsense.

Uncensored and unbiased information is hard to come across this day an age anyway, but reddit seems to actively and deliberately estroy any efforts put into preserving freedom of speech, information, and thought.

Furthermore, why was this even an issue? What power can a moderator really have? My layman's guess is not very much when compared to the group of people which runs the site. So really, the issue is with people like /u/spez, and the rest of the flock of administration that run this sad excuse for an informative website. Leave it up to these jerk offs to perpetuate bullshit.

I can't rely on this site for news anymore than I can rely on it for original content.

It's spiraled into a piece of garbage with a profit and an agenda in mind.

zz_z · 38分前

It seems like most of your post is about how you are going to use this tragedy as a chance to punish the donald, I can't stand that sub but I don't think this is an appropriate response either.

This is a really disappointing response to the events that unfurled last weekend.

pteridoid · 43分前

We are working on a change to the r/all algorithm to promote more diversity in the feed, which will help provide more variety of viewpoints and prevent vote manipulation.

Does this have anything to do with a certain subreddit stickying tons of posts so the members can upvote rapidly so that reddit's algorithm thinks it's hot news every time? Cause that was getting real old.

ImNotJesus · 32分前

Spez it's all well and good to say you oppose those things but what are you doing? There's a very popular subreddit regularly brigading other subs and harassing mods and despite constant begging by default mods to do something the admins stay silent.

What's more, in your last Q&A your own response to a question was partially responsible for the harassment of a mod that left that mod needing to take a break from Reddit. As a default mod (who has never personally been the victim of mass harassment), it seems like we hear a lot more about what you think than actually doing something. When are you going to start taking the people who run your website for free seriously? Do we need to blackout every time we need some fucking support?

Trunkington · 45分前

Maybe having the mods of one of the most important subreddits not telling users to go kill themselves would be a great start.

cloudduel_13 · 22分前

That mod account that multiple mods are using shouldn't be allowed.

booyah719 · 27分前

it is never acceptable to harass users or moderators.

But it is okay for moderators of large subreddits to biasedly censor users, tell them to kill themselves, and swap between accounts when they're found out?

It shouldn't have taken a national tragedy for admins to do something about that cesspool. /r/askreddit shouldn't have been the place to receive information.

We are nearly fully staffed on our Community team, and will continue increasing support for moderator teams of major communities.

Support? You need a fucking overhaul.

sadistmushroom · 35分前

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Cutethuhlu · 42分前

Expressing your anger is fine.

Oh good. Fuck you, spez. /r/news has been censoring for a long time and you know it.

no_talent_ass_clown · 22分前

I completely understand where /r/news was coming from with clamping down on the hate speech. I also understand allowing that kind of stuff to roll downhill to /r/The_Donald whilst moderating the hell out of /r/news.

We are working on a change to the r/all algorithm to promote more diversity in the feed, which will help provide more variety of viewpoints and prevent vote manipulation.

I'm curious - what kind of changes?

We are making this change to prevent the use of Sticky Posts to organize bad behavior.

Again, curious - what kind of "bad behavior"?

allthefoxes · 20分前

I can't speak for every default moderator but at this point I don't see why default subreddits can't belong to reddit at the end of the day, ala eminent domain

/u/Doctor_McKay explains it better than I could, but simply slap /u/reddit on top of the modlist of any default, and give yourself the authority to handle situations like this.

I'm very surprised this is such a lax slap on the wrist. Every mod makes mistakes, I do all the time...but this was a fuck up through and through.

If a default doesn't want to give ownership, they cant be a default

I'm not suggesting reddit admins actually moderate the subreddit - I'm just saying you should really be giving yourself the power to handle these issues.

I am very surprised /r/news is "getting away" with this - Though I am happy with the changes you guys are making at least.

GuruNemesis · 33分前

" We have seen the accusations of censorship. We have investigated, and beyond the posts that are now restored, have not found evidence to support these claims. "

So, given that the first 24 hours makes a huge amount of impression on people, there's no censorship besides deleting posts, but only temporarily.

Are those posts going to be back on top once they are undeleted?

Didn't think so.

Also, when addressing vote manipulation, what assurances are their that the policy doesn't just mean controlling the posts you don't like? What is vote manipulation? If a group of people all up vote thing because they as individuals want to upvote it, but they happen to be somehow seen as unfavorable, is that vote manipulation, or just voting?

HandshakeOfCO · 47分前

Or you could just like, get some new non-bigot mods....

reformedman · 43分前

Thanks /u/Spez, but why not allow users the opportunity to fill out mod satisfaction surveys, so the the bad ones can be replaced with good ones?

pizzaparty123 · 14分前

I only visit Reddit now for humor and select niche subs (sports teams, etc) for news. Getting your everyday world and US news from Reddit is frustrating because of the inherent bias.

I'm not surprised a forum-like website such as Reddit would skew to the left, but it's been over the top recently. Pew Research found 47% of Reddit users identify as liberal, which is about twice as likely as the total population.

I like Reddit, but events such as this remind me why I don't get my news here.

G30therm · 26分前

We all know that the "one moderator who crossed the line" is just a scapegoat for all of the problems, there's no way this level of censorship (which it was) occurred due to a single moderator. However, the 'rogue' mod was so far out of line that they made themselves an easy scapegoat for the rest of the problems too.

It's over now and /r/news will be scrutinised for a long time to come. Hopefully that is enough to prevent it ever happening again.

Lets move on.

vrbana · 37分前

Far to little, far to late. Reddit used to be the place I came for breaking news and eye witness reports immediately after something happened. My frontpage was flooded with Bataclan info AS IT HAPPENED. Still, there's nothing on my frontpage. The largest shooting in this country, I place I live near and I lost a friend. This is a disgrace.

clintonthegeek · 23分前

We are working on a change to the r/all algorithm to promote more diversity in the feed, which will help provide more variety of viewpoints and prevent vote manipulation.

So what you are saying is you don't want /r/The_Donald scooping the discussions on any more events which default subs are all set to moderate for civility, etc.

You see, I don't think that is how it's going to work. The community of Reddit, the multitude of users, come here to have discussions and encounter the opinions of others. When moderators and administrators try to fiddle with the mixture of ideas, priviliging some and trying to obscure or minimize others, it interferes with the free exchange of ideas.

The world is changing. We all know it, we've all felt it. The world has gone digital. With AMAs and outreach programs by political campaigns, the MSM and establishment has descended massive sites like Twitter down to Reddit to have deeper discussion here. Also, anonymous imageboard culture, from sites like 4chan, has risen from its depths to occupy some sub-reddits and spread their memes and ideas. There are cold winds from the north, and hot winds from the south converging on this very website.

A storm is brewing on Reddit that nobody can predict.

I understand moderators and admin must feel like it's an impossible situation to please everyone as culture goes crazy and opposing ideas crash together in thousands of controversial upvotes and flamewars. Just realize that it's the users who choose to keep coming here that keep Reddit a thriving community. And they like keeping the strong arguments on the internet, in cyberspace, apart from physical reality where punches are thrown and people get shot. When they collectively say that "censorship" (not 1st Amendment violations, but merely overzealous moderating) bothers them, you should listen.

Reddit is the safe space for the societies most contentious issues to be battled out in containment. It's not a safe space for people's ideas to go unchallenged. I think that is how Reddit should act more like a neutral carrier, and not try to use admin/mod powers to shape how conversations go. To borrow a phrase from America's Declaration of Independence, Reddit has become the place for facts to be "submitted to a candid world."

Let us remain candid.

GameboyPATH · 40分前

We are working on a change to the r/all algorithm to promote more diversity in the feed, which will help provide more variety of viewpoints and prevent vote manipulation.

I admit, I'm interested. Even if we don't get numeric details on the exact changes made to the algorithm, could you generally explain what direction these changes go? Are we talking limits or caps on subreddit frequency? Differences in threshholds for karma scores?

cripplingSeann · 44分前

/r/news needs to be snubbed from the default subs

yeahdefinitelynot · 45分前

It seems like every time there's a problem it has to do with some mod that people have had a problem with for ages.

mikey_croatia · 23分前

Whether you agree with r/news’ policies or not, it is never acceptable to harass users or moderators.

Is it acceptable from mods to behave the way they did? This is beyond some "he said, she said" bullshit. Actions need to happen and general community should be aware of those actions. Also, I don't know the exact process of becoming a mod of a default sub, but it is obvious that it needs improvement.

cranphi · 37分前

I THINK we (Reddit) learned something from Boston. I can only hope that we can learn something from this as users AND as mods/admins. r/news and Reddit as a whole is/was SUPPOSED to be the new standard for news consumption. As a user, I counted on being able to come there, find the absolute latest information uncensored on whatever was happening. Then as a human being, do my due diligence and weed thru the flotsam and jetsam and find the greater truth. This weekend, Reddit failed me and failed us all in that respect. As mods and admins you absolutely cannot pay this transgression lip service, that is, if we all want to learn something from this and get better. Information and access to that information is now more important than ever. And yes, its more important than feelings. Be what we need you to be reddit and r/news or we will find what we all want and need elsewhere. It's entirely up to you.

HelveticaBOLD · 17分前

I've noticed the last several major news stories have taken so long to reach the front page that I have gotten faster updates on Facebook and TMZ, among other sites.

Reddit used to be lightning fast as a source for news, but in recent months it's become, well, kind of pathetic.

Can we expect this to change, or has reddit's usefulness along these lines come to an end?

PrivateChicken · 36分前

"One Moderator" sounds like the person who offended the worst has been thrown under the bus to cover everyone else's ass. I want to know that systemic changes have been made so that when I go into a breaking news megathread it's not a graveyard of deleted comments. It's fine if moderators are trying to remove off topic meta complaints about "censorship" or whatever, but I find it hard to believe every comment in that thread needed to be pruned.

This problem could have been avoided if we didn't have just a small group of gatekeepers managing the news source for Reddit. It's a perfect example of why the very concept of defaults is cancer to Reddit itself.

PandaBear10 · 43分前

This is not an isolated incident, and shouldn't be treated as such.

amanforallsaisons · 6分前

You titled this post "Let's talk about Orlando" when it really should be "Let's talk about /r/news."

People in /r/news were trying to talk about Orlando, and 17,000 comments were deleted. What percentage of those comments do the admins agree should have been removed?

Care to share a bit more of the details of the admins "investigation?"

indianadave · 29分前

As someone who likes to turn on /r/all during times of major news stories, it was extremely frustrating yesterday to see that one sub was dominating the front page with relentless complaint posts and what can only be classified as Upvote manipulation.

While having RES or hiding subs on desktop is fine, I cannot do that on mobile apps easily.

But I wouldn't be complaining if this was an isolated, one day issue. In this election year, everything has become more polarized, and the 3 biggest offenders of content spamming, /r/the_donald , /r/politics , and /r/SandersForPresident have been controlling the front page and top posts of all.

Yesterday wasn't an outlier, it is a signal of things to come, where a small sub or community can completely manipulate the content of the site.

My short term solution would be to remove those three subs (and which ever dominant Hillary Clinton sub should emerge in the coming months, if one does) from inclusion in /r/all, the same way large subs like /r/nfl does.

Breaking news should not be an opportunity for subs to push an agenda. What happened in /r/news was inexcusable, but I'm sure it was a result of the exacerbated pressure from angry people wanting to make an impact on the reddit narrative.

Alroni · 18分前

Why the fuck would you get rid of sticky posts? They're a way for moderators of subreddits to bring attention to content they feel is relevant or interesting. Controlling what shows up on /r/all is one thing, but this is a blatant attempt to mess with the affairs of subreddits specifically. You're only making the situation worse.

BearHero · 5分前

You should invest in some professional development training because it was a shit show. The fact that Facebook is breaking such huge news to me when I heavily rely on Reddit is a concerning sign looking ahead. They can say sorry, but what happens during the next big event without proper instruction and only a slap on the wrist?

1millionbucks · 29分前

and they must be text posts.

This is fucking stupid. Ban /r/the_donald if they encourage brigading with stickied posts, no one will miss them. Don't make every other community suffer for their idiocy.

What this announcement does not say speaks louder than what it does. Reddit needs to overhaul its policy towards moderators. /r/news has had a cancerous mod team for a very long time, it's a shame that it took a national tragedy for that fact to get any attention. Reddit needs to kick out supermods like /u/qgyh2, or at the very least limiting their powers, and give communities some democratic powers to counteract bad mods. Is anyone really surprised that a moderation team of 19 people had trouble moderating a community with nearly 9 million subscribers? /r/science has well over a thousand mods and they still have difficulty removing all the off-topic comments that appear on even the top posts. This is a problem with the leadership of /r/news, and the only reason the leaders of that subreddit are who they are is because of the date at which they arrived at reddit.

Nillix · 10分前

they will only be able to be created by moderators; and they must be text posts.

Change levied directly at /r/the_donald methinks. For those not in the know, they were sticking stuff to be focused for mass voting, and when it hit the front page, rinsing repeating with more content. Good, because fuck that noise.

joozian_ · 21分前

tl;dr we just made some changes to prevent /r/The_Donald from having any posts reach the front page

orangejulius · 27分前

Live threads are the best place for news to break and for the community to stay updated on the events. We are working to make this more timely, evident, and organized.

I think that will help. Having mod teams bend and break under the weight of a news event to the point that threads are either locked or removed and all the comments nuked isn't good. Having /r/the_donald be the only visible source of news was even worse.

Thanks for the update.

Physick · 43分前

The fact that i got my news from a self post in /r/pics says a lot about /r/news as a subreddit. It needs to removed from the defaults.

Skyon1 · 38分前

This level of moderation did not occur during the Paris shootings, Brussels airport shooting, airline crashes, etc. Something more needs to be done here. During the aftermath of the largest shooting in US history is not the time for heavy moderation and ban attacks from moderators. We come to reddit for the flow of information. I've unsubbed from r/news and will replace it when something more suitable comes along.

hiero_ · 10分前

We are working on a change to the r/all algorithm to promote more diversity in the feed, which will help provide more variety of viewpoints and prevent vote manipulation.

Translation: We are going to minimize posts from /r/The_Donald appearing on /r/all

Fucking finally.

Hibria · 14分前

People were getting banned and comments deleted for saying muslim..... it is clearly heavy with censorship. Many people unsubbed including myself for this very reason, and for the leaders of reddit to have "not found this to be the case" makes yall as bad as them.

FluidicTugBoat · 38分前

I like the change to Sticky Posts. Most subreddits use them like the new version, "Announcement Posts", have to be used, and I never really understood when people would ask the mods for a post to be stickied. Isn't that the point of upvoting and downvoting?

Rocksbury · 23分前

This is disgraceful...Blame everyone but yourselves.

The mods who have been called out for months if not years had been confronted with a huge story and they do what we all expected.

If News is not purged you lost any respect some users may have had.

TechN9cian01 · 39分前

Let's talk about Orlando

All but introductory paragraph about /r/news.

Edit: I wouldn't know where to begin talking about either issue (so good luck /u/spez!) except to separate the issues entirely. I doubt the victims' families and friends give a shit about whatever the hell a "subreddit" is right now. No doubt we all care, but we're not focused on them right now either.

jdw101 · 24分前

Lip service. /r/news has been a shitshow for a long time and reddit has supported it wholeheartedly. The only reason we are now getting a response is because it was entirely too egregious. Banning a shared new account won't change anything.

SellinMelons · 41分前

Censorship defeats the purpose of this site. Default mods should not engage in censorship in any fashion, nor should any mods for that matter.

doctor_rockstar · 29分前

Reddit has investigated Reddit and determined that Reddit did nothing wrong.

frog_avenger · 3分前

a few posts were removed incorrectly??? If you were serious that means that you think we're all a bunch of morons. I woke up at 5:00 AM to head to work on Sunday. I saw the initial thread on r/news before i went to work. When I took my lunch break, I went to reddit on my phone to see if there was any new info available. To my surprise, The top post on r/all about the tragedy with 15k+ upvotes was from r/askreddit. R/ASKREDDIT. I went to look at r/news to find that at least the top 5 posts were locked and every comment on them was deleted.

If you don't think that every thread with 5k+ up votes and hundreds of comments each from a default subreddit being locked/removed is censorship, Than you're a fascist.

This response is absolutely pathetic and shallow. Basically you're blaming all the censorship on the ONE mod who told someone to kill themselfs?

This response does not sufficiently address any of the points of outrage that happened on reddit this weekend. You should be ashamed that you're trying to cover up censorship on this scale and covering for mods deleting comments from people who were trying to HELP PEOPLE AND SAVE LIFES by posting info about how to donate blood to the victims who were lucky enough to survive.

I am beyond angry that this is the only sorry response we get from the admins.

Oh and by the way, I can only assume that you're going to alter the r/all algorithm so that r/the_donald isn't going to be seen on r/all ever again? because of diversity in the feed? you don't agree with that subs politics so you're going to continue to censor them? you don't think any of us can see through your facade?

-eDgAR- · 33分前

So is this "announcement" sticky just a different name for it, or is is a completely new thing? If it is just the same thing with a new name do you mean to say that moderators will no longer be able to sticky links completely?

ReginaldVonBuzzkill · 31分前

Can we get details on what's being done about the brigading and vote manipulation that apparently caused the moderation team to melt down in the first place? I'm not sure I understand how changing the feed algorithm for /r/all is going to prevent vote manipulation. Is there no way to track the users that are using these exploits?

HrBerg · 7分前

I don't think that the new sticky thing is a good idea. For example, /r/rarepuppers, one of my favorite subs, frequently stickies user's posts that are deemed worthy, a sort of 'mvp of the day' type of recognition.

danweber · 40分前

We have seen the accusations of censorship. We have investigated, and beyond the posts that are now restored, have not found evidence to support these claims.

What do you define as "censorship"? Because there were obviously huge piles of comments that were wiped out.

Vilks_ · 21分前

This is exactly what people have been saying would happen. You scapegoat one of the mods, and the rest go free to continue destroying the subreddit.

IrbyTumor · 29分前

The problem is with /r/news anyone can go to unreddit or goldf1sh and see what was removed. A lot of the removed posts had nothing visibly wrong with them and the common interpretation is that the redditor was expressing a thoughtcrime not currently in vogue with the editors of /r/news.

People are allowed to reject and criticize a religion. When that religion has adherents that commit acts of terror, we are allowed to mock and openly reject their belief. What's odd is that criticism of their hate is classified as hate by /r/news mods. You can't even react to someone killing us without being called a racist.

But that's not what is really going on here. /r/news has been caught trying to control the narrative. Most redditors can agree that we can make up our own mind without their interference. People annoyed with the meddling by /r/news might want to consider /r/qualitynews as an alternative.

sammie287 · 37分前

No evidence to support that there was censorship? The moment news broke out that the shooter was Muslim the only thing on r/news was a megathread with no information. It contained about 5000 deleted comments, some about blood donation information, and one comment by a mod telling everybody to stop acting like "crybabies." This event wasn't on the front page until the end of the day, many hours after it should have been. Now they're trying to save their reputation and you're buying it because they restored threads a day after the news was relevant? What a disgrace.

frigitar · 39分前

Sorry but "Removing a post incorrectly" = censorship!

Removing a post that factually claims the killer was a certain religion and posts asking for blood donations is censorship! Restoring a post hours later and after worldwide outrage is still censorship! Maybe you, as Reddit admins, hold yourselves to higher standards but what /r/news did, most certainly was censorship.

All mods must take responsibility and the sub should re-earn its default status over time.

You are underestimating how much trust and credibility users have lost in this sub. There cannot be a gray area when it comes to this. You need to set a precedent.

SSJ3_DONALD_TRUMP · 22分前

"We have seen the accusations of censorship. We have investigated, and beyond the posts that are now restored, have not found evidence to support these claims."

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

kekforever · 45分前

One moderator did cross the line with their behavior, and is no longer a part of the team.

STORY TIME PLEASE

mcduck0 · 21分前

BAN shared moderator accounts!

/u/RNews_Mod NEEDS TO GO.

Werner__Herzog · 38分前

This is certainly just a compromise. But I can see how a full blown ban of the_donald would just cause more headaches. Hindering them from using their common tactics is definitely better than nothing.

o11c · 2016-06-13T22:59:23+00:00

Two things that are absolutely needed, that you haven't addressed:

It's against the rules for a user to create an account to circumvent a moderator's ban. So why are moderators permitted to create a new account to moderate major subreddits after one of their moderator accounts disappears for one reason or another? (Also, for defaults, purging of inactive mods needs to be automatic and entirely dependent on activity in that subreddit.)
The quality of Reddit is entirely dependent on the quality of its community - not the quality of "algorithms". Vote manipulation was not a notable problem at any time yesterday. Rather, the problem was that one or more moderators decided to stifle discussion from its ordinary community (Since it's a default, the community is already everybody! Brigading fundamentally can't happen on something everybody checks regularly!), and all the rest of the mods were perfectly happy to let it happen.

Or, to put it shortly - previously, it was possible for me to trust Reddit to inform me of any major news story (it doesn't matter that updates aren't perfect!), but that is no longer the case. I didn't know about this at all until I heard about it from other media, which is frankly embarrassing.

caribou16 · 30分前

Lesson learned. No longer count on reddit for news.

You_For_Rick · 9分前

According to Reddit admins, /r/news was totally right to censor the news, it was those other pesky subs that were exposing the corruption who are the actual bad guys!

laserbot · 1分前

We’ve all been set back by the events, but we will move forward together to do better next time.

And we all know there will be a next time. Thanks, America for being a festering breeding ground for reactionaries while our incompetent leaders are only empowered based on their willingness to subjugate themselves to global corporate interests, rather than on helping to facilitate a common good for an incredibly wonderful and diverse population and prevent these kinds of heinous acts from occurring in the first place.

Rather than squarely and fervently expressing solidarity toward LGBT people who are victimized daily by people of all religions in this country, the country marches further toward the reactionary right, and foments hatred of Muslims with our predictably damaging focus on the perpetrator instead of the victims.

Of course, the thing to focus on is how Reddit mods will handle the next tragedy. Forget even contemplating that we might have the power to curtail these tragedies, instead of promoting them and guaranteeing repeats through knee-jerk band-aids that only exacerbate the problem instead of class-based global solutions.

Teeklin · 33分前

What Reddit needs if it wants to remain a place where everyone from all corners of the world can come together to share information and ideas is transparency. Not just, "there was one problem user who did a few questionable things and we dealt with it, I promise" but TRANSPARENCY.

I get it, you're a business, your interest is in making money and that's cool. But you will last longer, gain more trust, and make more money in the long run with transparency than you could ever possibly make by trying to hide or cover up or sweep under the rug all the shit that has happened and will happen in the future with this site.

This is Reddit. We DEFINITELY understand fuck ups. We know that there are a lot of assholes in the world, and a proportional amount of them make their way here. There are going to be plenty more incidents like this one, but if you want to remain a trusted and neutral platform then we need absolute transparency.

This can't just be like firing some employee somewhere where you shuffle them quietly out the door. Tell us who the mod was, tell us what threads he affected, what excuses he used, what he said when he was confronted about it, and how you came to the conclusion that it was a situation caused by only a single mod.

So very many of us come from other forums where shit like this used to happen all the time, mod or admin abuse, lots of public drama. The forums that survived and thrived were always ones which called people out on their bullshit publicly and weren't afraid to defend their decisions to any and everyone who wanted to challenge them with things like screencaps of conversations and logs to provide proof to the rest of the users.

You are not going to hurt your reputation or your bottom line in any way by providing detailed insight into these incidences. You're going to build trust and it's going to help you out greatly in the long term if you develop a policy of open and honest discourse in these situations.

speedracerfx · 2分前

Wow, what complete bullshit. Those fascist fucktard mods nuked everything related to Orlando. This was not the work of one mod, and it's far from the first case of censorship during a large event in r/news, though it's certainly the most blatant case.

So basically what Reddit Admins are saying is:
1. Only a couple posts were deleted by accident. Oopsies. BULLSHIT
2. Mods are allowed to use a shared account so as to not have any personal accountability.
3. Four month old alts are allowed to be mods on a default sub so there's no personal accountability.
4. Oh, and everything that happened is the fault of the user base, and not the fascist asswipe mods who, as a team, were actively trying to delete the truth and force their own narrative during a huge news event.

Fuck you and fuck every single mod at r/news. That sub has absolutely no business being a default while any one of the current mods is still running it. You have all lost your credibility, not only because of what happened, but because of the bullshit lies we're being told in response to it.

TheCheesy · 2016-06-13T22:58:56+00:00

I think we understand the rules or /r/news. I believe the issue was the mass panic and thirst for information. People wanted to discuss the issue. Obviously there was a lot of strong opinions and hate but there was also a lot of good. Posts in the mega thread didn't need to be completely deleted. If Reddit is good at anything it's getting the important news to the top and burying the hate.

I know a lot needed to be done, but I've seen lots of bans and mutes happen with no response and with little regard for intentions.

I watched TV the day of and I'm in Canada. It was a stream of a US station showing Obama giving his speech and their reporters saying it was tragic and hiding a lot of the facts. The Reporters on my local station explained it fully with no hidden details after.

If the news in the US is hiding important details and Reddit is too where can we go for reliable trustworthy news on recent events?

I want Reddit to be a platform for free and open discussion.

nate1212 · 21分前

Let's talk about ~~Orlando~~ r/news

FTFY

CAxVIPER · 3分前

How can you say there was no censorship? Every thread until the one in /r/askreddit made front page was deleted and several users reported being muted by the mods for asking why they were deleting post. I saw one thread when I first got on in the morning and within an hour it was locked. Within another hour it was deleted. There was another one within a couple of hours which was also deleted. Finally a post from /r/the_donald and /r/askreddit made it to front page and /r/news finally decided to create a megathread and quit deleting the threads. Then they followed up by deleting blood bank info which might have been done by a bot but if so then there needs to be a better review process put in place for those deleted post. Regardless the mods of /r/news should be removed and new team put in place. I understand when it is a default sub there is going to be a lot to moderate but if they couldn't handle it or simply didn't want to then more mods need to be brought on. Saying you will work closer isn't going to change anything because in reality we know nothing is going to change and it is just a way to make people happy.

triarii7 · 2分前

So here is how it is. you said fuck all in your hand wringing up there.

nice subtle hints about trying to get rid of /r/The_Donald but you fuckwits can scream and holler all you want that we are mean, racists, bigots, nazi, etc. but guess what? we tell the truth no matter how brutal no matter how much it hurts your precious world view. and that is why we had the Orlando story on the front page and not the fucking cucks of /r/news.

the truth of the matter is muslims are fucking dangerous locust and every fucking sub in this hell hole have been sticking their fingers in their ears crying and silencing anyone who dares break the narrative of "diversity is strength". but when 50 dead bodies are in your face you can't hide or lie eny more and the truth will makes its ugly way to the front page for you to see. do what you want about this.

BUT EVERY FUCKING USER ON REDDIT HAS SEEN YOUR SUPPRESSION OF TRUTH FOR WHAT IT IS.

almagemela · 36分前

A few posts were removed incorrectly

A significant amount of posts were removed incorrectly.

r/news should no longer be a default sub and the mods causing the issues should no longer be mods.

Teuthex · 7分前

A few posts were removed incorrectly, which have now been restored. One moderator did cross the line with their behavior, and is no longer a part of the team. We have seen the accusations of censorship. We have investigated, and beyond the posts that are now restored, have not found evidence to support these claims.

Whether you agree with r/news’ policies or not, it is never acceptable to harass users or moderators. Expressing your anger is fine. Sending death threats is not. We will be taking action against users, moderators, posts, and communities that encourage such behavior.

Bullshit, spez. Thousands of comments were removed incorrectly, and this is corporate doublespeak for cracking down on communities that dares to shed light on /r/news's disgusting censorship by claiming, without evidence of course, that they're making 'death threats'. This isn't going to fly. This is how you burn your website to the ground.

duckiesuit · 6分前

In light of Reddit's increasingly clear role as a first-destination news source, is there any movement toward adding journalists to the admin team? While I know Reddit is not a journalistic outlet bound by the profession's voluntary ethics code, an experienced journalist could, at the very least, assist in preventing the site from causing active harm during live news events that are moving at breakneck speed.

As we've seen in other breaking-news situations such as the Boston Marathon bombing and the Paris terrorist attacks, Reddit's teeming mass of posters and contributors can sometimes cause harm with speculation, doxxing, unsubstantiated reports, and giving away sensitive information during an active attack.

Maybe you do already have a journalism team in place -- but if not, I would like to know if you're considering it.

(I asked this in a reply, but thought maybe I should make a top-level post.)

RedMushtoom · 41分前

The admin team has lost all creditably. I really don't care what you have to say anymore.

Theemuts · 15分前

While I understand reddit's official stance to let moderators have the power to moderate their subreddits in the way they see fit (because 'dissenters' can create their own subreddit), it just doesn't work for large subreddits.

Millions of people are subscribed to /r/news, and its the primary news source for many of them. The current situation has lead to terrible behaviour on both the moderators' and users' side; while it was wrong of the specific moderator to lash out in the way he did, I think it's fair to say they received harassing messages very frequently at that point.

Removing /r/news from the defaults will fix nothing. Events like this demand strong leadership, and I don't think the moderators of large subreddits should be expected to just have the skills to manage millions of members without significant support from reddit itself. I'm happy to see this announcement promising improvement on that front.

made2order555 · 3分前

/u/spez, the fact of the matter is that the Orlando massacre was caused by the homophobia that saturates American culture to this day.

Why, why do you, /u/spez, and the rest of Reddit insist on enabling that homophobia? Subreddits like /r/the_donald, /r/imgoingtohellforthis, /r/4chan, etc. constantly pump the front page full of it. Comment sections in various front-page posts are littered with casual homophobia.

It might seem inconsequential to you if a user says "OP is a fag" or some variation thereof and gets thousands of upvotes, but every tiny instance of these things contributes to a greater narrative that emblazons people to go to gay clubs in Orlando and murderer scores of people.

As far as I'm concerned, reddit, your website, played a role in fostering the homophobia and transphobia that LGBT people face on a daily basis. But you seem uninterested in doing anything about it.

2A_is_the_best_A · 33分前

Points #2 & #3 seem directly aimed at /r/The_Donald. I don't see how those items had anything to do with the unnecessary censorship and mod abuse from this weekend.

/r/The_Donald was the only place to get the news about this event. So let's go ahead and restrict the ways they work. Sounds like a plan!

raging_dope_fiend · 4分前

Can we just have a new current events default? Something built from the ground-up to prevent incidents like this?

throwthisawaytoday1 · 38分前

It's really strange, I spent the past few years getting my news from Reddit. I knew what was coming through was mostly uncensored and I was getting the raw story. People were able to discuss as they wanted, and down votes took care of those not participating/saying hurtful things.

Now I'm at this point where I'm having to figure out where I can find my news and where I can talk about it freely, because that's just not happening here anymore. I love Reddit, and I really hope this change helps things. Thanks for making the effort- I hope it isn't a wasted one.

Zombies_hate_ninjas · 9分前

and we have a duty to provide access to timely information during a crisis. This is a responsibility we take seriously.

You can't completely fail to do that, then the very next day make such empty platitudes. /r/News was completely useless yesterday. I will never bother to even check reddit for news in the future, let alone consider it my primary source.

The mods failed that sub reddit, and nothing has changed. The Admin team has no control over the situation, and that hasn't changed.

Reddit is the worst website for delivering time sensitive news to people when they need it most. And that will remain the case.

As time goes on this site is becoming less and less relevant. Is anything going to be done to correct that? Because I don't see anything changing here for the better.

Disapointed_Idealist · 10分前

You realize this made the news, right? Like the actual news on actual news sites? Reddit, by the way, is no longer considered one of those.

I hate to dogpile on you here, but I'm afraid this just isn't going to cut it. Especially in light of the "Facebook manipulating news feeds" thing from a couple of weeks back. People might be a little more sensitive to this kind of thing for now.

Look... mistakes were made, balls were dropped. Everyone sees it, everyone acknowledges it, and I'm afraid a half-assed "It wasn't that bad and we're working on it" isn't going to buy back any loyalty that was lost. /r/news hemorrhaged 100,000 subscribers over the course of one day. They do not trust you anymore and this response doesn't do a goddamn thing to regain their confidence.

leDesespoir · 31分前

Sorry, but anyone that uses Reddit as a primary news source is a fucking idiot. They'll be very uninformed. This isn't even nearly the first time a relevant news story hasn't even really shown up on Reddit except in outraged reaction memes. Why anyone would trust Reddit of all things to inform them is beyond me. Don't buy this bullshit that spez is saying, all they really care about anymore is making money.

rsvagle · 47分前

Glad to see an admin speaking about this. Thanks.

Safety_Dancer · 35分前

Sending death threats is not. We will be taking action against users, moderators, posts, and communities that encourage such behavior.

So will news be blanket demodded or will it be removed from the defaults? In this age of cyberbullying do you really want the default news subreddit to homophobically erase a terror attack while a "long time, experienced, mod" tells users to kill themselves?

gizzardgulpe · 42分前

"We are working on a change to the r/all algorithm to promote more diversity in the feed, which will help provide more variety of viewpoints and prevent vote manipulation."

Thank you. I hate having to click through to page ten to see something that isn't bullshit from r/the_donald

tragopanic · 39分前

Even though redditlive posts are technically links, it'd be nice to still allow those to be stickied.

SpeeDy_GjiZa · 10分前

First time ever my friends (non redditors) give me unheard news and not the other way around. Something is wrong and should be fixed. What surprises me the most is even if there were 1 or 2 mods doing shady stuff, why did everyone on the mod team just agree to that? Are they just part of a bigger thing? Are they cherry picked by one guy running everything? A purge would be the best thing to do in theory and I think it's pretty deserved since nobody reacted, but something needs to be done to prevent these thing in the future or reddit will collapse. Haven't seen a single mod comment trying to explain what happened. Goddamit people just chill out, don't try to push your agendas to everyone.

StrangerJ · 15分前

Lmao literally everything you are changing is to stop /r/The_donald from being so popular on all

bonobosonson · 35分前

So... the /r/news thing is totally fine according to you, it's just that /r/The_Donald were able to get multiple posts onto the front page that you're pissed about? K.

Sgtblazing · 22分前

I have trouble seeing Announcement (Sticky) Posts on my feed. While a news article gets upvoted, might it be the case that users do not upvote AP's in comparison to regular posts as it is already at the top of the subreddit? I would like a feature where an AP will be placed higher than a normal post on my feed if it is active, as I did not see any AP's for this event until well after it concluded. Given the lack of a /r/news post about it due to the thankfully now removed mod, I had to turn elsewhere for news instead of turning to reddit, a trend I really hope does not continue as reddit has been my broad news source until this failure.

unknownanything · 2分前

Whether you agree with r/news’ policies or not, it is never acceptable to harass users or moderators.

You're actually chastising your userbase for being upset when important news stories are deliberately suppressed in the name of a political agenda? That's nervy

I would hold out some hope for this place had you come on and said "we understand that something happened that was wrong and we're going to do our best to try and fix it". Not the case though. At this point, I'm more or less thinking that you and the CEO that came before you have deliberately let this website slide down the drain in order to pander to the more PC crowd.

harps86 · 48分前

Mistakes were made.

soylent_absinthe · 1分前

we will move forward together to do better next time.

Removing the mod is a slap on the wrist. I see nothing in the content of your post to suggest that any of the actual underlying problems will be fixed.

Maybe it's time for you and the other leadership of the company to rethink the idea of "censorship is okay as long as it's in favor of my political or social ideologies." At the end of the day, all I see from the /r/news is a bunch of excuses about how their intentions were pure - how they wanted to control the narrative, just like the police in Köln on New Years - which is supposed to justify their censorship.

whenyouknowyouknow · 39分前

Let's talk about this, I can understand one or two Mistakes surely processing real time information is a hard job not gonna fault anyone for that. However the wheels really fell off the wagon here. First off, most initial threads got immediately deleted which again, could be an issue limited to just the hard struggle of keeping up with the information. I would guess when something like this happens there are a million threads that all get started so I can imagine it's difficult.

However the issue I have, and maybe however time else is feeling is that it shouldn't have taken 24 hours for a response from senior leadership of Reddit.

Reddit used to be the front page of the Internet, truly it used to be. I would hear about news from Reddit that wouldn't hit major news networks until 2 days later. However today, there seems to be a huge lag in information and things take way to long to reach the major Reddit audience.

Find your roots and sort out this nonsense because it's just getting tiring watching this website screw up again and again.

mutatron · 44分前

to prevent the use of Sticky Posts to organize bad behavior

Can you expand on that? I mean, who did it and what did they do?

Jamesev93 · 45分前

How can we ensure greater moderator transparency?

akharon · 31分前

What we're seeing is the landrush fallout. If someone were to get a number of high-value subs early on, they could wield some power here. There's no meritocracy, and unlike the web where a domain name is inconsequential in light of google rankings, names matter here.

People look for news from /r/news. They look for technology at /r/technology. People have been rather unhappy with the moderation of both. I live in the Seattle region, and there's some rather unhappy people with the moderation there, but for whatever reason, nobody can get an alternate sub off the ground. Shocking, but people don't intuitively go to /r/seattlewa instead of /r/seattle.

What I'm saying here is that there needs to be some sort of directory structure in place so people can pick their sources when the defaults (whether top-50 or top of mind awareness default) fall short. If the mod team of /r/news runs it best, they'll beat out /r/nooz or whoever else wants a crack at it.

So /u/spez and admin team, how will Reddit work to ensure that the cream rises to the top, instead of in the pocket of those that were fortunate enough to get here first, nearly a decade ago?

Trunkington · 44分前

Mods need to allow more viewpoints, even if those viewpoints may be hateful. That's why this site was created in the first place and you all know that.

NewAlexandria · 13分前

We have investigated, and beyond the posts that are now restored, have not found evidence to support these claims [of censorship].

Why can't you do your credibility, and us all, a solid — and just say "the mod censored posts, and we uncensored them."

I know you don't want to open more of a shitstorm, but it's not like anyone [paying attention] doubts that censorship happens 'beyond your control.' Just own it and work on real solutions, instead of BAU.

Reddit mod censorship scandal are like mass-shotting scandals: all talk, no action, another one occurs, lather, rinse, popcorn.

shittyartist · 6分前

Fuck you spez. Youre the problem. You think "true" opinions come out the mouth of those "oppressed" and will do anything to appease the vocal retards. Even if that means lying for them.

You are also responsible for monetizing all moderator teams on all subs. So you think you accomplished something when all you did was give the enemy the keys to castle for your personal gain.

Fuck you for equally appeasing Muslims and Queers while blaming white men for the destruction of our society. These deaths are on Reddits hands.

Reddit pushd an agenda for profit and now 53 people are dead.

Crash310 · 26分前

We are working on a change to the r/all algorithm to promote more diversity in the feed, which will help provide more variety of viewpoints and prevent vote manipulation.

Does this have anything to do with /r/The_Donald? Could you explain further what actions you may take under the context of that point?

Bitterfish · 36分前

Just thought I'd chime in while there are still few comments.

Quarantine /r/The_Donald. No other sub does as much to spread hate and intolerance. Events like Orlando remind us that allowing these to spread has a price.

Moreover, it's just a giant beacon that brings in shitty, terrible users to this site, and they spread their festering offal to other subs.

Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

MoreCleverThanEver · 20分前

Other than the censorship of threads that we restored there was no censorship.

lifesabitch3250 · 31分前

This post is nothing but a bullshit lie. Business as usual on Reddit. Let's ignore the problem (censorship, power hungry admins, mods etc.), and deflect blame on users (Brigading) and one "rogue" mod. Are you ure /u/spez that only one guy is the problem? I beg to differ. This is the person whose account was 4 months old. We all know he has another account. Thats bullshit.

And we all know the admins are complicit in this censorship.

Don't believe anything admins or mods say about anything about this situation.

Reddit and /u/spez do not give a single damn about you or your "free" speech. Reddit is nothing but a cash cow to them. Users like ourselves are nothing but chattel being lied to and having our information tracked, logged and sold all while being told that nothing of the sort is happening. Despicable.

I thought /u/spez came back to save Reddit. What a surprise, that he's actually a no good sellout.

Lastly, Fuck the admins and the mods you pieces of shit.

spergery · 12分前

Why, when the outrage was about censorship and mods pushing their political narratives, have you not answered a single question about that? You've answered questions about stickies and reddit live, but nothing about the actual incident and why people are upset.

Why bother making a post if you're not going to address the things people are actually upset about? Did you really think that claiming you found no evidence of censorship in threads with 15k deleted comments, or that it was all the actions of "one bad apple" would really fly?

KimH2 · 19分前

So a sub's mods pull some shady crap yet again and the admins back them up and hand-wave it away as nothing...

If you continue to breed feelings of mistrust and disdain your user base will eventually get sick of it and leave.

For now you might feel secure thinking "Where are they gonna go?" but you push people to the breaking point and it won't matter they'll go back to using google alerts, they'll go back to using 25 different sites instead of 25 different subs. Reddit's 'convenience' just won't justify the hassle/toxicity

Shooterman56 · 3分前

What a sadly obvious attempt to just kick one mod account out and hope that all of this will go away. The behavior of the entire news mod team has shaken the faith that people have in your website and these politically scripted half answers talking no real responsibility for your actions is only making it worse for you. No instances of censorship? The deleted post logs make it clearly obvious that there was clear political motivation behind the scrubbing of some of the comments the started the shit-storm.

How patronizing.

indecencies · 16分前

We have seen the accusations of censorship. We have investigated, and beyond the posts that are now restored, have not found evidence to support these claims.

So in other words, you did find evidence to support those claims and you now think that by restoring those posts the event didn't happen at all? Those posts contained vital information in the moment, whether or not you restored them later doesn't stop it from being censorship when said information was most important. Blood donor deletion? Really?

lolw8wat · 8分前

A few posts were removed incorrectly, which have now been restored. We have seen the accusations of censorship. We have investigated, and beyond the posts that are now restored, have not found evidence to support these claims.

That's a lot of handwaving, hundreds of comments were deleted.

Also, this comes off as an admission to inappropriate censorship of one of the worst stateside tragedies by saying "Besides all the censorship you guys got upset about and we resolved the day after.. everything's fine."

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