Daily Bard Digest 2024-07-16

At 07/16/24 09:05:45 in ModSupport with a score of 1 point:

what does it say about Reddit

That they're a publicly traded corporation now, and have to make do with the cowtools, tech, and people that they have.

That their AI expert system triage model doesn't identify transphobia because it wasn't trained on transphobia - just like it doesn't identify misogyny because it wasn't trained on misogyny. Both are "widely acceptable" hatred ideologies. They are the most overlooked hatreds.

It took Reddit a year and a half after adopting Sitewide Rule 1 before they banhammered MGTOW, and 2 years after before they banhammered SJiA & TiA, which were explicitly set up to promote transphobia. The people who ran those groups still have moderator permissions in other subreddits, including a still-existing similarly themed parent subreddit explicitly set up to promote misogyny, islamophobia, and transphobia but which was operated to restrict itself only to slur-free misogyny, to maintain a presence on Reddit.

They whisper their hatred instead of shouting it.

Reddit's AI expert systems that do triage for AEO don't read English (or any other language). They are just a kind of powerful automoderatoresque filter. And the AEO employees that process reports are, by necessity, not veterans who can spot the subtle hatred and action it accordingly, because those employees (despite protections) burn out and have to move on.

That's a phenomenon that's industry-wide.

What does it say when a comment criticizing the Christian right is actioned before mods ever see the report

Reddit doesn't just action items because of content; they can and have actioned items because of actioning the author of the content. But, also — religion is an identity that can be targeted for hatred, and I've seen subreddits that explicitly targeted Christians for hatred and harassment. And seen Reddit close them, for hate. A speech act can be both critical of Christianity and express hatred for Christians. But that's a general principle.

And finally: the messaging they use for ticket closes conspicuously lacks "we didn't take action on this item becsuse we took action on the account in a way that encompassed the action we would have taken on it for this item, because of another otem kr behaviour". They have an "already reported" variety of close ticket messages to let you know your ticket was closed because the item was already handled, but the system that fires off those close messages doesn't differentiate between "didn't action this item because it doesn't violate", "didn't action this item because our assessor couldn't see the issue", and "system automatically closed this because at this time, a warning / temp ban / permanent ban had already been issued to the account and nothing more will be done to the account at this juncture, and this automated system is garbage collecting open tickets attached to this account".

That confounds figuring out how well first-tier is doing their job, from this side of things.

It will never be perfect. It will never even be good - not as long as society isn't. Not as long as Reddit remains open-registration.

But it isn't 2015-2018, when a cadre of White Identity Extremists choked everything worth doing off the site, in an attempt to mafia-control it.

Individual subreddits, and subreddit networks, can be good.

Individuals, individual subreddits, and subreddit networks don't get traction for being evil, and eventually get shuttered for being evil.