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Comment by volak | Hacker News Reader

Trouble is that too is your opinion. As a frequent of r/all after the first TD purge I see 2-3 TD links there a day. Nothing so outrageous.

It kind of bothers me that people let companies like facebook, twitter, google, reddit, etc push their agendas and bury conservative news. Recent data suggests facebook "fake news" alone could have swung the election. Social media being the primary source of news these days.

I'm all for these platforms having the right the police their own site - but they have to be open and honest about it. Otherwise you end up with conspiracy theories going viral making one side super pissed and willing to elect Donald Trump over the beneficiary of what they perceive massive conspiracy to silence people.

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I think it's a bit of a stretch to say this is burying conservative news, it's more like burying conservative meme-spamming. Especially because, well, now TD is going to be able to get on the page the same way every other subreddit normally does, which seems.. almost.. fair?

Certainly if you turn your head one way it's fair.

It's not inherently discriminatory for one-of-two political camps to have behavior that breaks the intended functionality of a platform and necessitates a response. You can argue that in this case it was, and that's fine, but I disagree.

Would it appease you if r/politics or a hillary subreddit had the same treatment? It wouldn't change anything but at least it would 'feel better'?

And I'd like to point out that one reason I'm defending spez and the reddit admins on this is that I think they've been extremely open and honest about it (barring the one idiotic mistake of Spez's). I like the guy because his admin posts have none of the veneer of bullshit that literally-every-CEO's has (ie Zuckerberg's "our mission is to bring the world together" drivel). It's super candid; he answers every question, even the sensitive ones; he's very open about mistakes and changes and motivations. It's rare for a company to display it and I value it highly.

I totally agree that doing special-case stuff to a community already obsessed with conspiracy theories about censorship is maybe a bad move, but I also think it's justifiable and probably justified. And also, there are tons of worse moves, in the game of not-pissing-everyone-off, in a generally shitty situation (such as banning the whole subreddit).

No what would appease practically everyone would be if r/all - the "frontpage of the internet" - had clearly defined rules as to what that means. Is it a collection of top up-voted content from a collection of subreddits? Apparently not due to this and other "algorithm changes."

Take twitter shadow banning people as its an easier example.

The rules of twitter are simple - someone tweets and it gets put at the top of a follower's feed. This is accepted as "the truth of twitter." When this truth is altered and all of a sudden some individual's tweets are NOT showing up in follower's feed people should be rightly pissed. No matter who the target is - because the accepted rules of the platform have been twisted to push an agenda. It is no different than propaganda and an insult to free expression.

> If you turn your head one way it's fair

Anyone can certainly justify anything if they are willing to turn their head with the breeze. I would point out the blatant mod and brigading bias in r/politics as an example of something you as a presumed liberal should be equally mad about. The content there is laughable and part of the reason why people even subscribe to the TD to get what little news is there.

Reddit has a problem - and its been written about before. Mods are dictators of their own communities and have complete control to push their own agendas within places that should be neutral. I don't see much of a future for the platform if this is not solved.

Re the first paragraph: your "apparently not" is incorrect. This change helps restore it to being a collection of top up-voted content from a collection of subreddits, where previously it was not following that as much, due to the special-treatment of sticky posts.

I don't like the bias in r/politics, but I don't think it's nearly as bad. Certainly not equal.

I meant "turn your head" in the sense that there are two palatable perspectives and they can be sort-of chosen between. It's not taking on any perspective without discrimination.

I agree with your last paragraph, except that I don't think it impacts the 'future' that much; I think reddit will go on existing even if it's not solved and still be about as popular as it is. It's a small but vocal minority who care deeply enough about it to actually quit.

[this dictator-mod problem is huge in my city's subreddit, r/seattle; a competitor (r/seattleWa) recently emerged and everyone jumped ship because the mods of the first were so awful and refused to relinquish power. So I certainly agree this is an issue.]

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