Comment by A_COMPUTER | Hacker News Reader

Comment by A_COMPUTER | Hacker News Reader

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I am not a habitual Reddit user and know little about the controversy with Pao, but I am interested in the subject of Internet site moderation so I have been looking into what has been posted in this thread. I found this. Pao linked to this post by a non-reddit admin recently as an example of how she thinks shadowbanning should be done: https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/35ym8t/promote_ideas_...

Selected quotes:

>You will never be told exactly what will earn a shadowban, because telling you means telling the sociopaths, and then they will figure out a way to get around it, or worse, they will file shitty, frivolous lawsuits in bad faith for being shadowbanned while "not having done anything wrong"[...]Shadowbans are intentionally a grey area, an unknown, a nebulous and unrestricted tool that the administrators will use at their sole discretion in order to keep reddit running[.]

The first thoughts that come to my mind are "this isn't compatible with a culture of transparency" and "there has to be a better way" but I can appreciate how hard it must be to keep a site the size of Reddit running.

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I don't see anything wrong with her explanation. Anyone who has run/moderated a public forum knows the pain all too well.

Of course, this only works well when the overlord behaves in a way that the subjects agree with. As soon as the overlord makes one too many bad calls, the subjects revolt.

I don't know how you can be interested in Internet moderation and think that "transparency" is anything other than a road direct to concern troll / rule-lawyering hell.

It maybe worked for meatball wiki but they were i) small and ii) disciplined.

I doubt their approach would work anywhere else.

Because I've done it. It is not necessary to put up with people rule-lawyering and concern trolling just because you're very clear on why people were banned.

Ellen Pao is on a power trip. Let's not forget she just filed a frivolous lawsuit against her employer. That's something that liars and other people without morals do, they try to take advantage of others by feigning victimhood when they know they're wrong.

Now she won't tell you the rules because like every unprincipled person, she wants to be able to change the rules as it pleases her. That's the type of person she is.

The quotes make her sound like a tyrant. That's what leftists become when they're given any power. I'll watch Reddit go down from far away as I do not want to be in the same website as liar Ellen Pao - she might frivolously sue me.

Tyrants come in all shapes and sizes. Power corrupts, after all...

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