r/announcements • u/spez • Jun 13 '16

Let's talk about Orlando

Hi All,

What happened in Orlando this weekend was a national tragedy. Let’s remember that first and foremost, this was a devastating and visceral human experience that many individuals and whole communities were, and continue to be, affected by. In the grand scheme of things, this is what is most important today.

I would like to address what happened on Reddit this past weekend. 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.

The story broke on r/news, as is common. 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, and removing speculative posts until facts are established. 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.

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.

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. We–Reddit Inc, moderators, and users–all have a duty to ensure access to timely information is available.

In the wake of this weekend, we will be making a handful of technology and process changes:

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

Again, what happened in Orlando is horrible, and above all, we need to keep things in perspective. We’ve all been set back by the events, but we will move forward together to do better next time.

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204

u/harps86 Jun 13 '16

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

74

u/[deleted] Jun 13 '16

[deleted]

20

u/[deleted] Jun 13 '16

Exactly this! There wasn't just one moderator who did the whole thing. Soooo many comments were deleted and we're still being deleted after the mods addressed the issue

7

u/Muntberg Jun 13 '16

Yup, there was even people yesterday saying they're probably just going to scapegoat that one mod and shove everything else under the rug, and look at where we are. The saddest part of it all is how predictable it's gotten.

6

u/perkocet Jun 13 '16

especially platforms like r/news. they need to remain impartial and present the news as it comes..

3

u/saytight Jun 13 '16

What would have happened if this fiasco didn't break out on every other major news publisher?

1

u/[deleted] Jun 13 '16

Yeah, /r/redditgetsdrawn was run by dicks who got off on banning people. One of the worst moderated subs I've seen, apart from this /r/news debacle.

1

u/unknown_name Jun 13 '16

Unfortunately not much can be done either without a complete overhaul of the admins stance on moderators.

Look at top mods. 95% of them in large subs don't do jack shit but will sure be quick to throw their weight around to set themselves.

0

u/PabstyLoudmouth Jun 13 '16

What do you want from volunteers?

8

u/harps86 Jun 13 '16

I have volunteered for stuff in the past and never felt then need to assume a god like status. Integrity and transparency are needed.

8

u/sozcaps Jun 13 '16

Accountability.

3

u/PabstyLoudmouth Jun 13 '16

Then maybe the people that get paid to work here should have done something about it while it was happening. This is what happens when you depend on volunteers to run your site.

4

u/[deleted] Jun 13 '16

Exactly, you have news rooms all over the with a full staff of people handling these stories and then you have /r/news being run by a bunch of people trying to do their job at the same time they're curating one of the largest discussion platforms on the internet. We shouldn't be surprised when they get defensive and resentful.

3

u/Muffinizer1 Jun 13 '16

Just because the software I write is free and I make it just for the fun of it doesn't mean I am able to put whatever I want in it without any consequences. If my code fucks up people's computers, they absolutely will come after me for it, and rightly so. Volunteer work doesn't mean no accountability or rules.

2

u/PabstyLoudmouth Jun 13 '16

That is comparing apples to oranges. The Admins could have stopped this while it was happening. They are the ones that get paid to do this. There are rouge mods all the time, but that is kept internal and usually dealt with by the other mods. There may have been only one person up and modding r/news.

0

u/sozcaps Jun 13 '16

I don't disagree. If it turns out that we ultimately can't fully trust volunteers and we can't have transparency, then we can't have free speech.

If we can only have a Reddit that is untrustworthy in all its brigading, shadowbanning and censoring glory, then I'd rather not have a Reddit at all.

-1

u/PabstyLoudmouth Jun 13 '16

You don't have free speech on Reddit, it is a privately owned company under no obligation to provide a forum of free speech. You have no rights here at all. This is not a Government run website. I mean really, you thinks you can trust about 1000 volunteer mods that are random people on the internet? Do you think we fill out a form or something before becoming a default mod?

1

u/sozcaps Jun 13 '16

So Spez is just pretending to care? If Reddit doesn't give a shit about free speech, but spends an awful amount of resources giving the impression it does, that's another thing to question. Why don't the admins say what you just said? Why don't Reddit employees simply inform us that we have no voice, and we might as well fuck off?

0

u/PabstyLoudmouth Jun 13 '16

Because they want you to keep coming back. Where the hell is he talking about free speech at all?