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Comment by gkoberger | Hacker News Reader

I started the r/sf subreddit 15 years ago (but don't currently moderate it). Yeah, that post was completely unsubstantiated, and was removed by Automod. I re-approved it, although the comment in question does contain misinformation and might have just been a coincidence.

(Yeah, I know, the r/SF subreddit is rough... it's always hard to run a subreddit where the only thing that people have in common is proximity. SF is my favorite place in the world, but it has many real problems. The mods consistently try to find a balance where it's not just an anti-SF crime-ridden sub, but also not censored or hiding real problems.)

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> it's always hard to run a subreddit where the only thing that people have in common is proximity.

I don't mod any city/country subreddit, but I frequent several, and they are basically all awful. I keep visiting them for the rare gems of useful information, but 99% of the posts are complaints about crime or the cost of living, photos of the same five tourist attractions, or meta posts complaining about the aforementioned.

The moderators of /r/melbourne, in the lead up to a state election in which the right-of-centre's main campaigning point was crime reduction outright banned the posting of any crime related news. Make of that what you will.

https://www.reddit.com/r/melbourne/comments/7pmjwx/all_melbo...

As a subscriber to this sub-reddit, the constant spamming of stories relating to people of particular ethnicities committing crimes was annoying. It became a constant drum to summon to action racist trolls and idiots.

That and it was attracting a ton of undesirables to the sub that don't even live in Melbourne. It's been immeasurably better since that rule was introduced. There is plenty of other places for that sort of thing already.

On one hand censorship is bad, on the other crime in particular is an easy way for non-locals to astroturf or disrupt local communities because they can just grab a news article and argue on the basis of generic talking points. I think it’s absolutely the case that this is regularly happening in many Reddit communities already, I’ve seen it first hand in the San Francisco and Bay Area subreddits.

IMO the engagement optimization problem in social media is driving the increasing share of crime discussions online. Yes crime is getting worse in some areas, but I think crime just heavily drives engagement (which news media has known for a long time). With more conservatives going online, we’re seeing a bifurcation of traditional (cancel or callout culture, some kind of injustice) outrage porn - more common in the past when the internet leaned younger and more educated/urban - and now crime-related outrage porn that appeals to the right wing.

Agreed. r/Dallas, r/Vegas, r/Austin, all absolutely terrible engagement and the "power local" types who have to make themselves known in every single thread are insufferable. I've stopped engaging with city-local subreddits and subscribing to new ones anytime I move, they are just hubs of toxicity even by Reddit standards.

Nextdoor has a similar problem but even worse when it comes to the toxicity.

Nextdoor is much worse because instead of emergent community standards there is always some neighborhood admin who is the nosiest busybody you've ever heard of, because that's exactly the type of person who would be a Nextdoor early adopter. And the Nextdoor platform compounds the toxic nature of the product by giving crime posts wider distribution than all other kinds of posts.

https://twitter.com/punished_cait/status/1628002713937092610...

Nextdoor is where people go when they've been kicked out of the neighbourhood Facebook groups (or entirely out of Facebook).

/r/boulder is the same. If you only read that sub you'd think it was a Mad Max wasteland where the sidewalks are paved with used needles. It has a homelessness problem and its been getting worse since COVID, but it's still the safest place I've lived by a long shot.

Honestly I don't think I've felt safer in a city in the US than I did in Boulder. Haven't visited in 5 years, that's plenty of time for things to change, but it's unbelievable that it could be some crime-ridden hellscape.

That’s fascinating to me - all I’ve ever heard is that Boulder is a clean, safe, beautiful place to live (albeit expensive!).

If I could handle snow, I would love to live in Colorado.

I frequent /r/Austin and I have to respectfully disagree.

…kidding, that place is a cesspool that is basically exactly how you describe it. Overt cynicism and ranting about things every town has (traffic, off leash dogs) combined with power user trying to control the narrative constantly and gain some sort of quasi-celebrity status. Occasionally you get some good content, but it’s pretty rare.

FWIW, I don’t think it’s gotten measurably worse since I started going there periodically circa 2016. I think it’s simply the nature of Reddit and its inner workings producing this dynamic when it comes to local subs. Some are worse than others (likely having to do with the proportion of disenfranchised white dudes in the city), but otherwise it’s mostly going to be the story with almost any local sub.

Sounds like all of Nextdoor basically

I used to spend a bit of time on r/StLouis and it was the same. The problem with subredits is the same all over the site: They are run by humans with their own built in beliefs, biases, and grudges. Truth matters not what a mod believes.

>might have just been a coincidence

???

Come on, man.

> find a balance where it's not just an anti-SF crime-ridden sub

The good ol' see no evil hear no evil approach to dealing with problems. I don't expect a subreddit to solve the larger problems of the city, but crafting the narrative to downplay it isn't really helping either.

You're spot on, the only thing that binds the users is proximity. They all pretty much universally want a place to bitch about current issues, not to maintain a positive image for tourists.

You write "crafting the narrative" but all I'm looking for is to not see the same old posts about porch pirates and broken windows. There's already a lot of places for that rumination. Nextdoor, Facebook, etc.

When looking at regional subreddits, I want to see the places to eat, events that are coming up, when major road work is planned, what new amenities just opened up, etc.

It's totally fine and not nefarious to apply that kind of filter. To suggest the reason for it is image-massaging "for tourists" is unfair.

If I hosted a coffee meet-up and more than half the people showed up just to talk about deforestation, it’s pretty reasonable to take steps to try to change that up. You could call it “crafting the narrative to downplay it” but I’m not sure that’s fair. Maybe I just want to spend sometime enjoying coffee.

>The good ol' see no evil hear no evil approach to dealing with problems

This is a somewhat curious and surprisingly uncharitable thing for a relatively heavy and long standing HN user to write on, well HN. Right at the top of the submission guidelines, and relatively well followed, is

>Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

That's not because none of that is important, it's because there are endless other places to learn about it and discuss it. Indeed, coverage and discussion of such things are more the rule than the exception in classic major media, which still has the most enormous reach. You don't have to do absolutely everything in one single place. It's the World Wide Web. Other fora are a click away. I think it's hard to argue that "everything forums" are generally better and focused ones generally worse. It's not wrong to want to have places to find the positive and wonderful stuff that isn't on the front page every single day.

>They all pretty much universally want a place to bitch about current issues

Who is "they"? You're creating a self-fulfilling prophecy here: if that is allowed to completely dominate, it'll drive away anyone who doesn't want that 24/7/365, and then all that are left are those who do. If HN suddenly just became a copy of major news front pages and comment sections, I suspect most of us would immediately move on.

>not to maintain a positive image for tourists

And this just seems like a pretty unpleasant dig. Any town let alone big city has all sorts of great stuff happening, interesting nooks and crannies, fun hobby groups looking for others to join, tips and tricks people have discovered to make living there more enjoyable, and on and on. Much of which can be hard to discover, even for those who have lived there a long time. Contrary to your assertion, it's not wrong even for locals to desire a place to find some of that even if it means keeping off a percentage of the generic endless political hot potatoes getting thrown back and forth. Why should a reddit (or any random web forum) suddenly be charged solely with "dealing with problems"?

My comment was a criticism of the San Francisco subreddit on Reddit, not of Hacker News. The rules are much more freeform over there and the site as a whole is constantly trying to find its balance between mob rule and moderator authoritarianism.

In this particular case the SF subreddit moderators want it to reflect an aspirational view of how they want SF as a city to be, and the users tend to want to discuss the city as it is.

As a moderator of r/sf, that's simply not true. We just want balance.

On the flip side, preventing others from crafting a narrative is just as much a part of the job of a mod as anything else. It's a hard balance.

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