LOL THE ADMINS LITERALLY SET /R/DEFAULTMODS TO PUBLIC BY ACCIDENT!!!!

submitted by Vulptex from self.MeanwhileOnReddit

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[–]JoeyJoeJoe 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Not to get too philosophical, but is the decline of Reddit, with its corrupt mods motivated by power & greed etc inevitable? Is this an unavoidable outcome for any website (or government administration) once it reaches a certain size?

Is principled sound governance always a pipe dream? Or is there truly a way to deliver on free speech while pursuing commercial aims? Could Aaron Swartz have prevented this outcome?

[–]RedItBurn 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Is this an unavoidable outcome for any website (or government administration) once it reaches a certain size?

I don't think so. Look back at how Reddit became the way it is today. Look back at the Elen Pao incident. Look at the banning of the_donald. Look at the censorship of conservatives, covid-skeptics, "anti-vaxers," "trans-phobes," and all the rest Look how Reddit Admins allowed SRS/AHX to violate every rule, without banning them, and instead promoted them. Look at how Reddit banned countless people and subs who pointed out the power-mods and cabal problem. Reddit leadership chose this path.

Then you also have to look at the design of Reddit itself, including the use of up/down votes to drive content visibility, and how subreddits end up monopolizing content and topics. Look at how Reddit never sought to fix those issues, and instead fed into them.

It's not inevitable, and I think it has nothing to do with size. Consider how Ruqqus, which wasn't that big, flipped out overnight. Look at how every lemmy instance is all about communism and "trans-rights" and other far-lefty ideologies. On the other side, you can look at Gab or TheDonald which are pretty big but true to purpose (even if I prefer neither site myself).

Also consider Twitter. Yes, Elon is far, far, far from really getting free-speech right, but Twitter has shifted a LOT under his leadership. (And yes, it still has lots of problems)

It's the leadership that matters.

[–]Dragonerne 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Jews control social media which is why it is so bad.

Jews own the banks and traditional movies + film industry + music industry.
They used their control of these industries to advertise their own social media platforms so everyone started using them.

I will save your comment. It is well written and the logic is sound.

[–]ageingrockstar 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Power corrupts. You need to set up systems which don't have loci of power. That is possible. To give one well known example, the bittorrent protocol doesn't have loci of centralised power. The code base is under a free software licence (meaning anyone can fork it), there are no centralised servers (it's fully peer to peer), and encryption can be employed end to end.

There are protocols and software being developed for community fora and such that follow the same principles. Some already quite advanced. That's where the promise lies, in my opinion.