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

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

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 · 1時間前

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"

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.

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.

airmandan · 32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.

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?

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.

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.

Edit: People are pointing out that /r/Worldnews doesn't allow US stories and they try to steer users toward /r/news. Fair enough -- I like /r/Worldnews. I wonder if that makes it a worse problem: /r/Worldnews gives /r/news a wide berth, which makes /r/news even more of a chokepoint. If default subreddits defer to other defaults, that makes each default even more important in its own niche.

amanforallsaisons · 1時間前

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 admin's "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?

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.

ReluctantPawn · 1時間前

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.

Feignfame · 59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.

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.

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.

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.

tcp1 · 1時間前

/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.

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.

KimH2 · 1時間前

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

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.

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.

manachar · 50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.

iEpicsaurus · 1時間前

Hello u/spez, you stated that a few posts were removed incorrectly however this is not the case. Thousands of comments were removed for no 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.

EDIT: I meant comments (my apologies)* which can be readily viewed on the r/news posts and comments such as the following one: http://i.imgur.com/OGaPNij.png

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.

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?

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.

BigIrishBalls · 1時間前

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.

bonked_or_maybe_not · 56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.

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.

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.

HelveticaBOLD · 1時間前

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?

MultiPackInk · 1時間前

/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?

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?

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?

Iamabioticgod · 46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

clintonthegeek · 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.

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.

duckiesuit · 1時間前

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.)

designer_of_drugs · 1時間前

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.

harps86 · 1時間前

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

BrownBoognish · 57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

Shooterman56 · 1時間前

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.

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.

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.

TheCavis · 47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.

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"

allthefoxes · 1時間前

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.

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.

Smoothvirus · 11分前

Going to be brutally frank here. Reddit dropped the ball on Sunday in a spectacular fashion. I was driving from Georgia to DC, on the road all day so I didn't have access to a television and all I had was my smart phone. All I could see in /r/news was deleted posts.

The whole reason I joined Reddit in the first place was so I could get news faster than the mainstream outlets. Reddit has now failed completely at this purpose. As a result I won't be using this site as a news outlet. I've deleted any news subreddits from my feed and am sticking to my special interests/hobbies only.

I'll reconsider this in the future but for now Reddit is useless to me for relevant news information.

md5getsum · 48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."

This is great: http://imgur.com/oPfrfPz

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.

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.

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.

TheCheesy · 1時間前

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.

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.

FranklinAbernathy · 37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.

AlexFaceHead · 1時間前

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.

MauldotheLastCrafter · 44分前

This is just really bad PR speak in general.

You somehow managed to mitigate the damage /r/news did to Reddit as a whole (deleting posts with blood donation information, really? forcing us to go to /r/The_Donald and /r/AskReddit for breaking news, are you serious?), somehow shift blame to phantom death threats against the moderation team, and introduce technology "changes" that sound more like you want /r/The_Donald off of /r/all than you actually want to do something about the problem at present.

/r/news as a whole yesterday was and continues to be a shithole because mods actively censored discussion once the information that Omar Mateen was a radical muslim. Full stop. If you as admins could look into what happened yesterday and not see what thousands of people not subscribed to /r/news, and the ~10,000 people who have unsubscribed since yesterday can see, then I just don't know what to say. Maybe get a new pair of glasses that aren't covered in corporate splooge and the sweaty desperation of trying to make the mainstream media believe that your /r/news sub isn't complete and utter trash.

Oh, and even titling this "Let's talk about Orlando," when the obvious problem at hand is your /r/news default, is despicable. Fuck you for doing that.

1時間前

[deleted]

sprite1405 · 44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.

MAXSquid · 1時間前

Please put in a better system to report mods.

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.

Monetizewhat · 38分前

Spez,

I have been a very heavy browser /lurker on this site for four years. I had to create an account just to post here. I don't mean to sound too abrasive but your post reeks of bullshit corporate PR damage control where the author has no respect for the reader's intellect.

The reason people were upset last year about the censorship regarding FPH was not because they agreed with them but because the same person who needs to silence opinions they disagree with when they are in the right will do so when they are wrong. Let's be honest, people like these mods aren't capable of realizing that they CAN be wrong. So as a fat guy who is/was indifferent to criticism that the mods were "protecting " users from, I have to at least admit that maybe you had to clean up certain areas of the website to make it a viable business that can be monetized or made attractive to advertisers.

But in a situation like yesterday your mod team crippled one of the most popular subs and subs like it are why users are here to begin with. And for just one moment cut the damage control bullshit because it's not doing the site any favors.

Do you think you will continue to have users lurkers or advertisers if you become known as a content aggregator that shuts down content during major events? Who will want to use a site like that?

Will advertisers want to be associated with a web site that suppresses pleas for blood donations to help save lives? I may not be a steady subscriber and this might be my first post but make no mistake: there are many accounts and lurkers/browsers that are questioning what use this place is as a news content aggregator if this can happen even once during a news story like this .

I know I'm going to make the conscious decision to use this site a lot less. I don't expect things to change very much until many others do. Censoring should happen only lightly and only where absolutely needed.

Other wise wtf is the point? I can have uncensored conversation in the real world and I had to go elsewhere for news because the "FRONT PAGE OF THE INTERNET " forgot what it's role was and why users are by here at all:

Content aggregation with a community to discuss the comments with. When you shut both content and conversation down, you are left with nothing for the users and nothing to monetize. Pull your head out of your ass.

Edit: unsubscribed from news even though I don't intend to do too much posting on this account because I'd rather get my news from the Huffington fucking post.

DownWithPastryarchy · 6分前

edit: just quickly, this isn't a comment intended to be a jab at you /u/spez, I'm just still pretty pissed at the situation, as the ramifications of such a situation could be huge - There was already one person who said that they first heard of the event on the news *in their car on the way to work after they had already checked Reddit... Imagine if that had been a relative of a victim, and they had yet to know.* - I have to also admit, I'm a little sick of the blatant mod abuse, too. The agenda driven shit that I've seen, and been a blatant target of in posts I've made, and having been on Reddit for almost 8 years, this place used to be a wonderful place for insightful and intelligent debate, not agenda pushing tripe by entire mod teams.

So, /u/spez, what I got from your post is that...

A few posts were removed incorrectly ... One moderator did cross the line with their behavior, and is no longer a part of the team.

They did nothing wrong, but one moderator was an asshole and is no longer on the team (he deleted his own account with no punishment...)

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.

We're going to try to focus on ensuring that Reddit Live is integrated more thoroughly - A system which is, when created, fully dictated by a small number of submitters with no means of stopping clear agenda pushing.

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.

Define preventing bad behaviour? in what way are stickies used to encourage bad behaviour? The mods at /r/pics posted one to ensure there was a place for people to discuss the events. The mods of /r/askreddit did the same - The mods at /r/news after they had finally got their act together decided to set one up as a sort of "oopsie, hurr hurr guys stop brigading us plebs!" post with a hollow apology, but where was the undesirable behaviour?

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.

This to me looks like a blatant poke at /r/The_Donald (a sub which I had little interest in prior to this fiasco, as I don't live in the US and don't give much of a shit about your overall politics) - You're mad that /r/The_Donald became pretty much the only place where people found a open forum to discuss the tragedy, and now you're punishing them for it, by declaring what they did "vote manipulation"? Fuck me, spez, you aren't that dishonest?

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

Something you guys repeat every time something like this happens. I can't wait for the next time it happens and you say it yet again. Have you considered, you know, focusing on the people you hire, and not the number you hire?

nederhandal · 35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.

frog_avenger · 1時間前

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?

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.

riemannszeros · 1時間前

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.

Sour_Badger · 40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.

Tralan · 1時間前

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.

Actual_Dragon_IRL · 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.

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.

NotWTFAdvisor · 1時間前

A few posts were removed incorrectly

"lol"

MisterJohnson87 · 1時間前

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

thematabot · 1時間前

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?

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?

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.

caribou16 · 1時間前

Lesson learned. No longer count on reddit for news.

Ciaphas_Cain · 12分前

So let me get this straight...

A user attempting to save lives with helpful information on donating blood gets censored by these mods, and YOUR FIRST RESPONSE is to claim there is no censorship going on and blame the users for brigading?

Absolutely disgraceful.

Obviously hateful messages against the mods should not be tolerated, but this was not hateful at all, in any way. Shame that nothing is going to be done because the admins agree with the mods' absolutely disgusting actions. This entire situation makes my blood boil.

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.

lazyFer · 56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.

Nathan346 · 44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.

0l01o1ol0 · 25分前

In such situations, their community is flooded with all manners of posts. Their policy includes removing duplicate posts to focus the conversation in one place

Look, dupe posts on breaking stories is an issue that's been around on web news aggregators since the days of Slashdot, and it's not going away. If you allow separate posts for every news link, it's inevitable that you'll get lots of submissions for breaking major news, and if the only tools mods have is post removal, you're going to end up with a lot of censorship.

Sites like Google News have shown that the good way to deal with that is to allow the "clustering" of stories, so that you see multiple posts of the same topic clustered together and the less popular ones hidden so that if you want to see more on the same topic, you expand the topic. This allows you to keep diversity of topics on the main page, and have multiple sources for in-depth coverage.

The other way is the Wikipedia current events way, where each breaking topic gets one big page with links to different sources embedded within the post. This will probably not work as well for Reddit, because one of the problems is that the discussions stop being easily navigable after reaching 1,000+, and the recent shooting news had posts with 40,000+ posts.

If reddit wants to remain useful as a news source, they're going to have to learn to hide stories on the same topic, with one main story per topic and a "show more stories on this topic" button, or maybe a "would you like to know more?" link.

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.

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.

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

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!

mcduck0 · 1時間前

BAN shared moderator accounts!

/u/RNews_Mod NEEDS TO GO.

nate1212 · 1時間前

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

FTFY

Hibria · 1時間前

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.

tisgdayfc · 1時間前

Is the mod actually gone or just that one account?

Jesus_Faction · 1時間前

/r/news should not be a default sub

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.

Fenral · 1時間前

I am curious what exactly you feel constitutes evidence of censorship. The entire thread was filled with [Removed] [Removed] [Removed] [Removed] [Removed] [Removed] [Removed] [Removed] [Removed] [Removed] [Removed] [Removed] [Removed] [Removed] [Removed] [Removed] [Removed] [Removed] [Removed] [Removed] [Removed] [Removed] [Removed] [Removed]

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.

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!

SerTinfoil · 1時間前

Again, what happened in Orlando is horrible, and above all, we need to keep things in perspective.

Excellent and mature point right here. Perspective is deeply lacking on this website.

doctor_rockstar · 1時間前

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Tacosaurus73 · 1時間前

the defaults need a look at

Jwillis-8 · 47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.

PandaBear10 · 1時間前

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

BeachCop · 15分前

As big as Reddit has become, you folks are now one of, if not THE, first source, people from around the world come to get breaking news. What happened yesterday was a GD travesty. People came here scared, curious and looking for information. Only to find yesterday's shitshow. You're not guided by any laws per say, but with the fact that so many visitors flock to your site in order to get the news, I'd say you have a moral obligation to ensure the news gets through properly. How do you do it? I have no idea. That's what you guys are here for. When an event like this unfolds, people want information. If you can't handle it using your current standard, change it.

You're bound to have some knuckleheads stirring the pot (racist posts, troll posts, rule violations, etc) but that's why the mods are there. Knocking some idiot mod from his mod pedestal doesn't solve the problem. You need to figure out what does. Enjoy the week and stay safe. Peace.

CallMeAladdin · 56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."

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?

EnterRlyeh · 17分前

Wow so people really sent reddit admins death threats over purportedly censoring a tragedy? People have their priorities all out of fucking whack...

lballs · 13分前

Have you considered increasing the transparency of the moderation in default subs? There was a large blow-back from the incidents yesterday but I believe this is also due to an increasing build-up of mistrust of the mods. We are way past the point of believing that "the mods will be better from now on".

Can we somehow get a log of the moderator actions? Can there be a ban on alt-mod accounts for default subs such as u/rnews_mod. Can default subs be required to have mods with multiple year history demonstrating they add to the community? It would be great if users could have some sort of influence of who future mods will be and possibly an impeachment process for the toxic mods. Obviously all this should only apply to the critical default subs that make up the heart of reddit.

It is sad it has come to this but some drastic changes must occur to try and restore the trust of the content in /r/news and /r/worldnews.

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.

Nillix · 1時間前

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.

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?

superslab · 8分前

I understand why you made this post. I even respect your reasoning. However, since you spent so few words dedicated to the event and the suffering it continues to cause and so many words addressing the whining complaints of people who couldn't stand a single second of not being able to make the worst mass shooting in american history about themselves or their "valuable contributions" toward their own weird causes, I will still wonder why you even fucking bothered. Let those sad assholes make this hate crime about "DA MOOOSLIMS" or about their political candidate, or just let 'em make it about themselves. You don't have to help them with it, and there's certainly no point informing them that this story appears to be about something else entirely.

Tjconfidential · 13分前

Yeah, great PR attempt. There is no excuse for the extremely unprofessional behavior of the mods over at r/news. It doesn't matter if it was only one mod, a few of them, or all of them. They represent the sub as a whole and should respect it as such. Reddit altogether has gone down a never-ending rabbit hole and will only continue to get worse. Such a disgrace. Do not tell us users what we need to keep in perspective, I believe that most of us are aware of what matters most here. That doesn't give you an excuse to apologize for the lack of effort given by the /r/news mods. The time when we needed information the most, our voices and opinions were stripped away from us. I am very sad about the events that happened in Orlando yesterday, and it makes me sick to see mods pulling out their non-existent internet cocks to prohibit people from getting the information they want to see.

thatusernameistaken · 54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.

Flashynuff · 42分前

Thank you, Spez, I think you've done a good job of explaining what happened and where things went wrong.

It's definitely more important to use this as a learning experience and focus on what users, moderators, and admins can all do better in the future rather than dwell on the past.

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."

TorchIt · 15分前

Let's talk about Orlando.

Isn't that what all of us were trying to do when comments were being systematically deleted and locked? I had to go to /r/The_Donald to get an up to date idea of what was going on. /r/The_fucking_Donald.

I appreciate the fact that you're taking steps to make sure this never happens again, but at some point you're going to have to decide what kind of platform you want to be. Do you want to be a fast-paced platform that aggregates multiple incoming news sources in a crisis, or do you want to allow the site to wring its hands and block important information because somebody said "The M Word?"

I also want you to know that the LGBT community feels utterly betrayed by reddit because of this event. There are a lot of people who think that the site was forced to choose a side - and the side that was chosen wasn't ours.

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.

BearHero · 1時間前

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?

overwatschen · 28分前

If you really think there was no censorship you need to understand one thing. There were tons of reddit users (I was one of them) who had no clue that the event even happened, while actively browsing reddit, while it happened. There was censorship, even if it wasn't permanent. It simply didn't get covered and you were completely left in the dark. I always thought I could rely on reddit to be up to date on any major news because I will undoubtly see it pop up on the front page of /r/all within minutes of it happening. But this time it was the polar opposite. It's not acceptable for a site like this.

Apart from that, 90% of the posts in the thread that was allowed to exist were removed. You can't tell me that that isn't active censorship. Because there was absolutely no reason or legitimacy to remove the vast majority of those posts.

Ham-Man994 · 54分前

What I hated most was that it appeared more people on this site cared about the drama at /r/news than the fact that there was a major terrorist attack in the US and fifty people died. People on here are so eager to cry censorship that they forget about the real issues.

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.

my_lucid_nightmare · 1時間前

A few posts were removed incorrectly

That is Bagdad Bob level of misstating fact. Dozens of posts were being deleted in real time, and the reasoning for doing so was pretty ridiculous given reddit's attempt to brand itself as an impartial and open news source.

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.

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.

announcements

調停者