Let's talk about Orlando

a_calder · 1時間前

/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)?

Metallics · 1時間前

Remove r/news from default subs

BlarpUM · 1時間前

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

ghostsnstufx · 1時間前

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

-run · 1時間前

This thread will go well.

o11c · 36分前

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.) Also, forbid shared moderator accounts (definitely against the rules already!) from doing anything except make stickies.
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.

adadadafafafafa · 1時間前

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"

hsmith711 · 1時間前

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.

thebaron2 · 1時間前

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

cheald · 1時間前

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.

istorical · 1時間前

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 (spoiler alert, the mods usually also agree with A and disparage people who believe in B!)
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. If the mods do something shady and get called out by the community, then immediately they (and the admins) go find some occurrences of the outgroup sending harassing messages (newsflash, it's gonna happen in a site with hundreds of millions of active users!) and try to entirely change the subject to talk about that and sweep everything else under the rug.

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.

Moderators are not meant to shape public thought or push their values onto others. Better to have no mods than mods who remove things they disagree with.

D0cR3d · 1時間前

Edit: See admins post here but they removed the requirement that for sticking a self that it had to be made by a mod.

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 · 1時間前

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.

mobiusstripsearch · 1時間前

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.

bonked_or_maybe_not · 30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.

In other words, outright lies are completely acceptable if they fall in line with the political agenda of those on staff at reddit.

70 seconds after the first reputable news source stated that the shooter was possibly of middle eastern descent - the entire mainstream sections of this web site were in full on Orwellian memory hole mode.

KimH2 · 55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

CowrawlAndFheonex · 1時間前

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.

ReluctantPawn · 57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.

MisterTruth · 1時間前

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.

thatpuck · 1時間前

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.

KSBadger · 1時間前

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.

HordeOfDoom · 1時間前

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.

Feignfame · 33分前

I don't know if I like being told that what I witnessed on r/news yesterday didn't happen.

Because it did. A subreddit full of people dedicated to immaturely cheerleading a political candidate was on the ball on disseminating breaking news while a sub specifically MEANT to do that and almost 100 times bigger was doing its best impression if MH370 and no where to be found.

There is only one moderator of that failure of a sub's mod team actually addressing any concerns actively and most people are screaming out how little confidence they have in that mod team without being heard.

This whole mess needs a seriously bigger response than some announcement posts that you'll 'do better' because frankly anyone who's been on Reddit the last few years know how worthless that phrase has become.

ABCosmos · 1時間前

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.

iEpicsaurus · 57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.

dltbgyd · 1時間前

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"

BlueSignRedLight · 1時間前

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?

2dilatedpupils · 1時間前

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?

tcp1 · 57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.

BigIrishBalls · 57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.

SixBiscuit · 1時間前

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.

druglawyer · 1時間前

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.

radio_ghost_car · 32分前

Anyone who buys into this nonsense announcement is a sheep. Yesterday proved once and for all that when the building is burning the site administration will hold down and censor information first, ask for forgiveness later.

This site has zero obligation towards free speech or its users, it is a profit driven machine only. Much like Facebook we are pressed and prodded to reveal personal information so that advertisers can find more ways to sell us products. Find alternative sources for news and enjoy the Taco Bell ads masquerading as legitimate content.

Tomes2789 · 1時間前

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.

matesc · 1時間前

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.

Edit: As someone pointed out to me they already made a new account which has been modded.

designer_of_drugs · 59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.

mafaldo · 1時間前

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?

clintonthegeek · 59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.

harps86 · 1時間前

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

G30therm · 1時間前

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.

Rocksbury · 1時間前

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.

matrix2002 · 10分前

You guys really have no idea what you are doing. It seems the more you want to try to push an agenda, the more it backfires in your face.

You need to get control of these power mods who control a ton of sub-reddits. Really, an user should have no more than 2 or 3 they control.

How can you justify one person modding more than 5 subreddits? It doesn't make any sense.

Really, I suspect these power mods who control such a large number of sub-reddits are really being paid by companies to tweak the feed and mod it so that it is favorable to them.

There is no way someone can do that much modding while still having some type of life outside of reddit.

You have professional mods that control most of reddit and as such, drive an agenda that is whatever they want.

You need to figure this out.

Actual_Dragon_IRL · 58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.

RootUser · 1時間前

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.

allthefoxes · 56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.

HelveticaBOLD · 53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?

lifelongfreshman · 1時間前

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.

riemannszeros · 34分前

Has this been addressed anwhere: why was that megathread such a ridiculous comment graveyard?

Was it just one rogue mod? What was this person doing and thinking?

I know that most of the deleted comments were complaining about the mods deleting everything (a vicious cycle), but many of the other comments weren't. Comments about how to donate blood were removed.

I'm in the minority, I suppose, because I think that some sort of narrative-enforcing political-censorship is far fetched and silly, but -something- was going on. You don't just start erasing blood donation posts for no reason.

Skyon1 · 1時間前

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.

FranklinAbernathy · 11分前

Are you people(admins and /r/news moderators) completely unaware that all the posts and comments you deleted were archived?

We know that your excuse is complete bullshit. You purposely deleted threads and banned users the moment it was released that the shooter was a Muslim. It wasn't because of duplications or racist comments, we can see the posts and comments that were removed; they broke no rules. You even deleted posts about places to donate blood, that is absolutely disgusting.

You are all completely full of shit, and rather than just own up to it and punish /r/news for their obvious biases, you choose to lie in the face of readily available proof that you are completely full of shit.

You admins and every single one of the mods at /r/news have lost all credibility, and it seems you've surrounded yourself in an echo chamber full of idiots telling you everything is fine.

I live in a small town in the Midwest and my local radio station was even talking about the bullshit you pulled. You should apologize to every person on Reddit, the people that keep this website going. Instead you chose to lie, while anyone with a keyboard can see you're completely full of shit. Very sad.

KytoCSGO · 1時間前

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.

iReign_x · 1時間前

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.

BearHero · 41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?

Shooterman56 · 39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.

amanforallsaisons · 42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?"

ETA: /u/spez In your post, you talk about how death threats are NOT OK. I wouldn't disagree. But then you hand wave a mod telling someone to kill themselves with "Oh, they're gone now. Let's talk about ~~Orlando~~ Rampart."

Are users held to a higher standard than mods? A mod can tell someone to kill themselves whilst deleting posts about where you can give blood, and we need to focus on how the mods got death threats? Has the offending mod been banned from reddit? Were they another mod's alt? Will they be back in 6 months?

echta94 · 1時間前

I refuse to believe that no proof of censorship was found. Are you serious? How many comments were deleted because the mods didn't agree? r/news didn't even have a front page link about it. r/AskReddit did. And are you kidding me, one moderator was able to do all of that?

This is a gesture to save face for a website that has been accused of censorship more than once and has proven to have shady business practices. I expect more from "The front oage of the internet."

AlexFaceHead · 50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 destroy 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.

1時間前

[deleted]

thebedshow · 1時間前

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!

manachar · 24分前

I feel like the Reddit community seems to be forgetting the anarchic nature of subreddit moderation and instead insisting that Reddit (the company) should be held responsible for moderation policies they didn't set.

I suspect your best choice would be to get rid of default subs and instead let people select their interests, and create an algo to have /r/all be representative of the "best" upvoted content.

I don't agree that Reddit SHOULD have the responsibility to ensure that content on this site should be moderated in a way that fits the majorities desire.

We can just make a new version or /r/news with clearer and better moderation. If people like it more, it'll do better.

I guess if Reddit wants to be more of a news org than they could hire some journalists as the mods of such a subreddit. Actually, that might be kind of neat to have some more "official" subs that provide these more critical feeds.

GameboyPATH · 1時間前

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?

airmandan · 6分前

Let's talk about Orlando.

That's what people were trying to do as the event was unfolding. Reddit was completely useless as a platform during that time. People were dying, and Reddit was sanctioning the removal of people posting where to give blood.

The time for talk is over. It's time for action now. As a moderator of several of your default subreddits, I've seen my fair share of default meltdowns. I instigated May May June with my well-intentioned but tone-deaf "Stop Think Atheism" spiel. I watched GamerGate unfold in front of my team in /r/gaming while well-intentioned but poorly-considered actions turned what should have been a single deletion into something resembling a grand conspiracy.

I've done my own fuckups and been on teams that have fucked up.

All of that pales in comparison to the shameful response from /r/news and Reddit Inc's subsequent complacency in their actions. Hundreds of gay, lesbian, and bisexual Americans were gunned down in a blaze of hatred. Half of those died, including an eighteen year old high school graduate celebrating her success:

The 48th victim of the Pulse Orlando mass shooting has been identified as Akyra Monet Murray, 18.

Murray, who was from Philadelphia, was in Orlando with her family, celebrating her graduation from West Catholic Preparatory High School. Her mother, Natalie Murray, she was on the phone with her wounded daughter as she cowered in a bathroom stall hiding from the shooter.

Natalie Murray said Akyra sent a text message at 2 a.m. on Sunday, pleading for her parents to pick her up from the nightclub because there had been a shooting.

Moments later, Akyra called her mother screaming, saying she was losing a lot of blood.

The 18-year-old was an honors student who graduated third in her class last week. She was headed to Mercyhurst College in Erie on a full basketball scholarship.

Reddit's reaction to this has been to enable and empower xenophobia by endorsing and embracing the wanton disregard for human life exuded by the moderators of /r/news during this indescribable, indefensible attack on the city that hosts the Happiest Place on Earth. Because what Reddit did during this whole fiasco was a fuck ton of nothing, and the result was people flocking to a quasi-satirical hub of fascist demagoguery because it was the only place they could have the discussion.

50+ people are dead, including that college-bound young woman, whose mother's last memory of her daughter is hearing her agonized screams as she bled to death.

And you want to talk? You want to make THIS the time you finally stand up for a moderator team?

If this is the line in the sand you're going to draw, you might want to notice you're defending a landfill.

MAXSquid · 1時間前

Please put in a better system to report mods.

GuruNemesis · 1時間前

" 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?

jdw101 · 1時間前

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.

RMAR_Devastator · 1時間前

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.

throwmeawayinalake · 25分前

u/spez/ I hope you are more transparent with the algorithms etc... I think most users know the cause for wanting to freshen up r/all

Brigading/Vote manipulation

Reddit is set up in such a way that it promotes brigading. Any community that calls out another community will have people read a post/their post, they now have the right to vote up/down on it as they participated in the content.

When posts hit all, people who disagree with the sub ideologically and see the post now have the right to upvote/downvote it/participate. It isn't a mass conspiracy, it is the basic nature of the reddit system.

People making anyone else aware of anything else on reddit allows the person to experience that post/subreddit and vote on the content. This can't be punished it is a flawed system.

subreddits that exist only to point out comments or subs by the systems definition exist to perpetuate a brigade as always SOME will vote where they may have never been influenced by the post before.

To fix this you would need:

limit who can upvote/downvote to a sub by only those who subscribe to the sub.
Moderators need a tool to limit posts to a sub on a timer, such as limited post mode 1post every 10 seconds not just a shut off restricted mode. during high stress and limit the queue of posts during this time to max out at 25.
- this would allow during high stress events and reposts to cause people to stop and look at new posts and find out they are reposting and can have a discussion in an existing thread.

Default Subs

as they are now need some extra scrutiny and transparency since they are forced subs.

There should be a transparent basic ruleset for a sub wanting default status common sense ones that mods would be accountable for and they should have a robust moderator team or get cut.

can you brigade a default sub? everyone is subbed to it they are the users of the sub now and should have the right to upvote/downvote and when something like this gets pointed out and the focus is on a specific area it will heat up.

I wouldn't use brigading as a defense here as the 'brigade' was more the entire community being outraged/worried as they couldn't get news on what was happening.

and finally in this case

/r/news mods definitely have a political bias as they are human, but they push that bias on to the user base, that is what caused this mess they have suppressed what they consider to be hateful speech and hurt your site with negative press as a result.

edit: couple words

booyah719 · 1時間前

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.

TheCavis · 21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.

http://i.imgur.com/muq4NmH.gif

Every post was locked, deleted or a comment graveyard. It's one thing to say that you don't want multiple copies of the same story when moderating, but someone or something was clearly going nuts in the moment trying to keep the front of /r/news free and clear from any stories of the shooting.

We needed an AskReddit thread for updates. They shouldn't be forced to cover for another subreddit's massive failings and people who aren't subscribed to that subreddit shouldn't be forced to dig around to try and figure out why there aren't any news stories on their homepage.

Not only that, but /r/news abandoning the story made /r/the_donald the go-to place for coverage, as it was the only subreddit that had a continuous stream of updates coming in, so it started dominating /r/all.

If you are going to, as a company, promote a subreddit as the place for news by giving them default status, they must demonstrate a certain level of competence during a gigantic news story. If they can't, Reddit admins must either take steps to ensure that they will be competent in the future or remove them as the default location for news stories.

One fall guy, a couple of tweaks to stop bridgading (which addresses the response to the whitewashing but not the actual whitewashing) and some /r/all algorithm tweaks (unless deleted posts are going to stay in /r/all, that seems irrelevant; also, I tend to browse my homepage or the default homepage, not /r/all)... you haven't really done anything. You haven't even identified the problem.

jagdos · 1時間前

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?

robbie5325 · 35分前

/u/Spez, I'm not trying to argue, I'm just wondering why certain subs aren't allowed to talk about other subs censoring or blocking content? Is it because the sub is dedicated towards something else, would it be okay if there was a sub specifically for that, or is criticism of other subs against the rules?

NotWTFAdvisor · 1時間前

A few posts were removed incorrectly

"lol"

vrbana · 1時間前

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.

pteridoid · 1時間前

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.

MisterJohnson87 · 1時間前

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

Hibria · 50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.

sammie287 · 1時間前

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.

transientcylon · 10分前

You pansies do what you like. As on Orlando resident I bought a nice 9mm, applied for my concealed carry permit and I'm happy as a clam. Oh and if your jimmies aren't rustled, I just gave the NRA a five year membership thanks to a Muslim.

But please, let's hear from people who don't own guns what the difference between a 5.56 semi auto and a 7.62 full auto is? No?

Stop saying "military gun", it is not. Full auto sales to civilians have been illegal for 30 years. A 5.56 bullet is hardly larger than a 22 caliber.

Flootersy · 1時間前

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.

mcduck0 · 58分前

BAN shared moderator accounts!

/u/RNews_Mod NEEDS TO GO.

jeremycinnamonbutter · 1時間前

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.

Cutethuhlu · 1時間前

Expressing your anger is fine.

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

fearachieved · 1時間前

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.

TechN9cian01 · 1時間前

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.

tisgdayfc · 1時間前

Is the mod actually gone or just that one account?

happy_tractor · 1時間前

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

Trunkington · 1時間前

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

Jesus_Faction · 1時間前

/r/news should not be a default sub

Raquefel · 1時間前

What happened on /r/news was a catastrophe of insane proportions and an absolute embarrassment to Reddit as a whole. The moderators' behavior (you know who's in particular) was absolutely unacceptable and it's very clear that /r/news needs to be removed from the default subreddits and an entirely new sub needs to be created, because what happened yesterday was unprecedented and asinine. I can honestly say that I have on very few occasions been as disgusted and as outraged as I was about what happened yesterday.

ReginaldVonBuzzkill · 1時間前

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?

Alroni · 54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.

Nathan346 · 18分前

Wow. Way to fail and glaze over all the issues. Yet again. It wasn't just 1 or 2 speculative articles. It was every single article on the subject was locked. Immediately as it was posted. Before lots of comments could even be made on the posting. Especially if the top comments were anything negative about Muslims, or anything that wasn't supporting more gun control, or saying how horrible it was. It wasn't just that one or two articles, or one or two comments were deleted, or that "brigading" was the issue, the issue was that a few individuals didn't like the comments in particular threads. So they deleted them or locked threads, waiting for other people to post the same articles, so that comments favorable to their agenda would be posted, upvoted and to be the top comments in the threads. Oh and one last thing "Muslim" isn't a race. So no comment should be removed calling Muslims terrorist. Unless you want to remove all comments saying anything negative about any other religion. I don't agree that all Muslims are terrorists, but calling Muslim terrorists Muslim terrorists is nothing but the truth. Whether you like it or not.

TheCheesy · 37分前

I think we understand the rules of /r/news. I believe the issue was the mass panic and thirst for information with lack of any patience or restraint on behalf of the mods. 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 and information 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 responses and with little regard anyones 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 facts on the event. 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.

reformedman · 1時間前

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?

nederhandal · 9分前

Sounds like you're punishing /r/The_Donald for /r/news' catastrophic fuck up. 'Modifying the sort algorithm to bring more diversity to the front page' is another way of saying you're penalizing one of the fastest growing subs on this site because of their popularity and willingness to discuss the horrific events that occurred on Sunday.

hiero_ · 47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.

MultiPackInk · 35分前

/u/spez - the mod that was banned has created another account, as you can see here: http://i.imgur.com/0Hb7UKI.png.
So that's a site wide ban, right?

Safety_Dancer · 1時間前

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?

duckiesuit · 43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.)

PandaBear10 · 1時間前

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

IrbyTumor · 1時間前

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.

ImNotJesus · 1時間前

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?

BrownBoognish · 31分前

Ah yes, the fall guy... classic Reddit. That dick nuts that told someone to go kill themselves was not the only person from /r/news to cross the line. They didn't single handedly pull that ridiculous stunt yesterday morning. All of the /r/news team is culpable.

The idea that they were understaffed is ridiculous as well. If you're a mod for /r/news and a news story of that magnitude shows up on your day off, and you know the sub is understaffed-- get your ass in there and moderate. You shouldn't be making excuses for yesterday's cluster fuck.

I agree that the tragedy is what is most important here, but /r/news and their petty personal world views and politics kept people from actually assisting the victims... but no, you're right, it was totally just that one mod... get real.

Quick shout out and thanks to /r/askreddit

Tacosaurus73 · 1時間前

the defaults need a look at

1millionbucks · 1時間前

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.

honestbleeps · 27分前

given what happened in /r/news, is reddit finally considering some sort of code of conduct or litmus test for rightful ownership of "prime real estate" subreddit names besides "I was there first"?

I understand reddit's policy on "first come first serve" made sense in the past, and I also understand it allows you to stay out of the very sticky business of "deeming someone unworthy" of a sub or whatever... but the whole "just create another sub and build that community" thing doesn't really hold water when it comes to subreddit discovery.

People check if [common name] exists, they don't just stumble across /r/alternate_news_sub_that_is_better_managed on their own unless people are spamming it / promoting it elsewhere, etc.

The current system probably should be reviewed, no?

anothercarguy · 50分前

We are working on a change to the r/all algorithm to promote more diversity in the feed,

This reads as: suppress certain subreddits that don't tow our line and promote ones that do

Care to elaborate on what subs you are targeting this time?

lazyFer · 30分前

I'm sorry, but you're somewhat full of shit. A for month old account being a mood of /r/news? It was an alt account. What's his other accounts? Only admins can find out for sure but there is already speculation on other accounts this mod had/has.

AMillionFingDiamonds · 12分前

Has there ever been a discussion about how to handle bans other than through mods? Like a review process? Because r/news shows up under all, which means every time someone who shouldn't even be moderating an argument between two cats decides to ban someone, they're banning someone from one of the largest portions of one of the largest sites on the internet. That's more than one mod should be able to do. Especially given that there is no oversight of their activity.

Also, it appears that one of the mods, possibly the mod in question, had a 4 month old account? Wtf? Is there zero vetting? No one wants to make sure it's not just the same guy who was removed, or shit, that it's not just one person managing different mod accounts?

Nillix · 46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.

danweber · 1時間前

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.

nate1212 · 57分前

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

FTFY

2A_is_the_best_A · 1時間前

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!

sadistmushroom · 1時間前

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PhilaDopephia · 11分前

No, it wasn't a few things deleted. Reddit totally missed an opportunity to allow thousands of people to discuss a live event. It was able to do this by the actions of just a few people. That's insane. A group of mods totally took down Reddit as a news outlet during the largest mass shootings in US history. This place has lost all respect for me in terms of news and is now a glorified image sharing platform with some decent text based subreddits. Fuck off making excuses for what happened in r/news. Something serious needs to change.

Also live threads fucking suck and a mass of people depend on others to update instead of a constant flow of new information.

Jesus christ this whole response is bullshit.

HandshakeOfCO · 1時間前

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

thatusernameistaken · 28分前

To say there's no evidence of censorship in /r/news not only this Sunday, but for the last months is very out of touch at best, disingenuous at worst. It's rampant with graveyard threads with highly upvoted deleted comments that strayed ever slightly so far from political correctness or dared to question the mods actions.

If that is the official vision of reddit, I'm out.

I mean, an account from Richard Dawkins or Stephen Fry wouldn't last a day in there.

This is depressing.

md5getsum · 22分前

Their policy includes removing duplicate posts to focus the conversation in one place, and removing speculative posts until facts are established. A few posts were removed incorrectly, which have now been restored.

UPDATE: This thread is being manipulated by MORE deleted comments by mods. http://i.imgur.com/ZGrPLYL.png

Only a few? This is not true. It's more than half the thread. http://i.imgur.com/047aYvR.png I used the Uneddit utility. Google Uneddit. Use it and come to this thread. This is just one fraction of the entire page, as you can see by the scrollbar.

There doesn't seem to be a reason when you compare some comments. A lot of genuine comments were deleted and valid information, is still not there. The deleted comments are in red. These are still gone.

We can go through every comment if you'd like, and compare it to this statement made here for "transparency."

Pokatz · 51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.

Iamabioticgod · 20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.

they deleted comments about blood donations. They nuked entire threads. They banned people for literally nothing. I was banned for asking where an alternative thread was to discuss it because literally the only place to talk about it for a good 2-3 hour was /r/the_donald.

Don't feed us this bullshit

Tralan · 34分前

I appreciate you addressing the issue, but I feel this is a hollow attempt at damage control rather than a sincere attempt to make Reddit a better place. What happened (on Reddit) was unacceptable, but you're still placing some of the blame on the users. It doesn't feel like the mods in question are getting more than a slight slap on the wrist.

And that's not fair to the community. You know, the people who make Reddit a success? I'm sorry if this means I can't mod anymore. It's a small game community for a card game that is all buy dying. They're good people and pretty much mod themselves anyway.

Physick · 1時間前

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.

yeahdefinitelynot · 1時間前

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.

Moii-Celst · 1時間前

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.

So kind of like this?: https://i.imgur.com/I6duX4r.jpg

You guys have a long goddamn way to go and a lot of cleaning up to do to make this a nice place to be around. You either need better oversight of your mods or more automated tools in place to take care of things like this. It was a terrible mess yesterday. Put in a better system to report and have mods reviewed.

And of /r/news response, it's laughable how terribly disingenuous it was.

Like /u/bernredditdown said below:

That was a pretty terrible response. Your own response is false too:

A few posts were removed incorrectly

They removed everything. Even blood donation information and condolences.

/r/news botched it, you guys botched it too.

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

So, it's okay to just outright remove helpful posts like this?: https://i.imgur.com/OGaPNij.png

Are you in on it with them or are you blind? This is almost hysterical.

Remove /r/news from default subs and replace the mods. They are untrustworthy and blatantly censored plenty of news and posts where plenty of people were trying to helpfully discuss the topic. They are a team, no matter how many times they want to try and point the finger at one particular moderator. That censorship went on all day when any one of them could have come out and attempted to save face and fix the issue earlier, but did NOT. It's despicable, as a whole.

caribou16 · 1時間前

Lesson learned. No longer count on reddit for news.

PrivateChicken · 1時間前

"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.

CeauxViette · 10分前

On any given day, more people could die in road accidents in the USA than died in the shooting in Orlando. So why is this a national tragedy, but the daily charnel house of our public highways overlooked? Why is this paltry number of lives lost so devastating and visceral? You say we need to keep things in perspective, so how's about this, well over 30,000 people die on American roads every year! It makes the amount killed by terrorists look utterly insignificant. You want something to get a bee in your bonnet about, well there you have it!

SonicFrost · 1時間前

Is it possible for default subreddits to have open modlogs? That way, people will be able to see what is being hidden from their front pages, if they decide to look through it.

JustAnotherPer · 34分前

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

"We investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong".

majoroutage · 8分前

We will be taking action against users, moderators, posts, and communities that encourage such behavior.

Does that include /r/shitredditsays or are they exempt as per normal?

RobotRock37 · 1時間前

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

Reddit Inc.

Vilks_ · 57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.

PM_ME_MARDIGRAS_PICS · 10分前

When a default sub funks up as bad as the mods of /r/news did, there should be serious consequences for them. Negative publicity like this will be the death of reddit.

floor-pi · 11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.

Apart from the censorship, there is no evidence of censorship.

This is honestly the moment that Reddit has jumped the shark. People are already looking elsewhere first for content. It's a disaster for the site, but it's a continuation of a theme which has been presided over by the management of the company for several years now.

frog_avenger · 40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?

lukehardy · 21分前

I never thought that reddit would become a, "safe space" for people who are too weak to hear ugly thoughts. The freedom of speech should not just protect the speech people love it should protect the speech that makes people cringe. Also as Christopher Hitchens said, when you begin telling people they can't say thing you are telling me I can't hear things. I think humanity has reached a point where the free exchange of ideas, both noble and monstrous, are the only way we move forward.

Jwillis-8 · 21分前

If you work for Reddit in any way. You're making this site worse, every single day.

If everyone would stop working for this site, it would be a better place.

StormCrow1770 · 44分前

We’re introducing a change to Sticky Posts: They’ll now be called Announcement Posts, which better captures their intended purpose; they will only be able to be created by moderators; and they must be text posts. Votes will continue to count. We are making this change to prevent the use of Sticky Posts to organize bad behavior.

Er, okay. I don't see the point of limiting ~~Sticky~~ Announcement Posts to being only text posts. Do you care to explain?

Sour_Badger · 14分前

This has to be the worst Mea Culpa I've ever witnessed.

we investigated

The entire user base can see it with our own eyes. This wasn't a question of if censorship occurred. This is was a question of to what extent.

This is the second non apology for blatant censorship. Are the admins really going to do nothing? You got foreign press accusing you of blatant censorship, this is isn't faux Internet rage. This was tangible, blatant, and frankly disgusting.

Edit: This feels a lot like a Friday afternoon whitehouse dump on controversial topics. You wanted for a Monday evening to address it? I'd imagine this is your slowest hour of waking EST time.

almagemela · 1時間前

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.

CallMeAladdin · 30分前

It seems like Reddit's only consistently adhered to policy is find one scapegoat and blame everything on them while singing, "My shit doesn't stink."

VibrantDisc · 11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 translation, if you ignore the evidence of censorship, you'll see that there is no censorship? Restoring the posts after the fact does not remedy that they were removed in the first place. The issue was also valid comments being removed in droves, not just posts, duplicate or otherwise.

thematabot · 35分前

What are your thoughts /u/spez, on the actions of a particular mod (/u/SuspiciousSpecialist), of /r/News, where he was actively telling users to essentially end their own lives.

And secondly was the deletion of his account undertaken by reddit or himself?

Thirdly it was unclear how to report this activity to reddit themselves yesterday, as if I am not wrong the report button on comments goes to subreddit mods. Could reddit make this clearer?

Edit: One more thing... This particular disgraced mod keeps making new accounts. Can you guys IP ban him or something?

sprite1405 · 18分前

Eh. You'll do your PR bullshit then go back to doing nothing about censorship. Actions speak louder than words. No action has been taken with r/news. No action will be taken. The lack of action shows to me, and many other reddit users, that you are for censorship. It is clear.

All I see is buzzwords not so cleverly written by a team of people. You know the bulk of reddit users will forget about what happened. You're banking on it.

whenyouknowyouknow · 1時間前

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.

frigitar · 1時間前

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.

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