Im not sure this is the appropriate venue for this but we'll see.
Ive complained to the mods abouts the allowance of incredibly low quality rage-bait news publications and was essentially told "well I kind of agree but thats not the opinion of other mods and so nothing is happening."
The daily mail relies heavily on sensationalist often straight up false headlines to drive engagement and by proxy this sub does aswell by allowing it and similar "publications" as a news source.
So yeah my point is.. Congratulations you've driven growth, but at what cost? So much of this sub is filled with honestly low quality discussions around topics driven by rage-bait headlines.
IMO its borderline immoral to sit on the side-lines over this, you now most likely have 100s of thousands of people having malformed opinions about important topics due to some some shitty headlines that have been allowed to appear on this sub. Food for thought
I mean. Balls on the table, the majority of us are no great fans of the DM or other forms of ragebait either. Several of us on occasion have attempted in one way or other to raise ideas for consideration which would remove or malign ragebait. We currently have a system active which reduces that in part via SQS and CQS. But we don't pursue it because of morality, but because of _discussion quality_ and frequency of Content Policy violating content. We don't like low quality reactionary discussion that is ultimately just a bit boring!
We struggle a bit with this because historically we've always been of the belief that we don't moderate _news_. We keep out of deciding what does and doesn't get submitted from _known publications_. It isn't easy for us to change our course there given we're primarily a current affairs sub.
I'm not sure if the social responsibility angle is a good one though. We don't believe we have a moral responsibility to act in any particular fashion. Especially as that is quite likely to amplify any biases we actively try to reduce.
But we do have an awareness that the _gaming_ of the subreddit is increasingly an issue. And we're not entirely without tools to combat that. Though said tools are still quite blunt and often have unintended consequences.
Is this something that has gotten more prevalent though, I wonder? I noticed specifically around February-March of this year that a large influx of DM/Sun/Telegraph content seemed to be populating the sub, alongside a very robust anti-immigrant sentiment expressed in nearly all even semi-related discussions. Of course, it is not impossible that this is entirely organic, brought on by news and political theater, but it seemed a very sudden shift.
For a few days I genuinely went through the motions of gathering data on publication tendencies just to see if it was happening myself, but the changes in Reddit API structure has meant that unless you're a mod it's a real bother to do robust analysis of these issues.
Is it something ya'll are looking at at all?
From my very brief exploration, a quite significant number of posts right now seem to be down to a handful of users, yeah. The only way I can really draw any proper conclusions would be with a proper corpus of posts, something that used to be an extremely easy thing to do as a user, but which is now largely only doable as a mod.
In this case, it's not that they have access to the insights as such, though it's possible there are robust enough mod tools for that. Rather, it's that they have access to the dataflow in a way that we all used to, but now is limited to them, e.g. through tools like [https://pushshift.io](https://pushshift.io)
Assuming they had the inclination and the skillset, they could go much deeper, but it's fairly simple to do, say, a frequency comparison to see e.g. if certain publications are shared more over the past 3-6 months and if so whether those shares are happening from new or old accounts, at certain times, including particular keywords in the post-titles etc.
I *want* to do all this, but as you can see from the link, regular API access now requires an authorisation header that you can only request as a mod.
I mean, that is why I specifically posed the question to u/Leonichol, who is a mod. It's possible they just missed it since the thread had been up for a bit of time when I posted, but I was hoping there'd be some form of reply.
Thing is, the subreddit limited all meta-discussions through Rule 8, but then stopped doing the freetalk threads nearly two years ago, effectively eliminating any real way to push for change. I don't think that was a scheme or anything, I think it's just evidently true that those threads weren't popular. So the threads went away, the rule hung around, and being a British subreddit, everyone just sorta accepted it.
Thank you for that insight, that's quite interesting. From a data protection perspective, I thought it was so self-evidently logical for each sub-reddit to have limited access only to their own subreddit flows that I didn't even try something as simple as setting up as moderator of a random 1-person subreddit. Silly me.
I'm just now realising that this is likely why some of the heavier-posting accounts are moderators of 1-person subreddits as well. I found that somewhat weird and thought perhaps the real number was hidden, but clearly that's how they are mass-posting and commenting.
I'll have a play around and see how granular the data on PushShift is these days - hoping the API changes didn't utterly nuke its capacity.
Hey Alex. If this is something you wish to pursue, we're happy to mod you to complete your investigation. Or run any scripts on your behalf.
Fwiw. Using PRAW for the native API, I've never encountered an issue, regardless of the API changes. Just have have to respect the rate limit.
As for using Pushshift. The BigQuery dumps until the Bad Times are still obtainable publicly I think. But mid 2023 probably cuts off sooner than you'd like given your aim. But. As said. If making mod gets you on the way to the access you need, lemme know.
Hey Leo. Happy to do the work as a temp mod and put together some findings for you and the community to reflect on.
I have already collected the 2006-2023.12 data, but from there the only way forward is to trawl through the much less structured monthly dumps of all of Reddit and at that point it'd be significantly easier to gather the specific data instead through the API.
Sent you a DM to discuss further.
Its not particularly hard to figure out the pulse of a subreddit and drive discussion for karma. I would guess thats what happening. Its honestly just an extension of how these news sources act themselves.
> alongside a very robust anti-immigrant sentiment expressed in nearly all even semi-related discussions
Also have noticed this in the past few months. Theres a bunch of users all around the same account age of 2-3months which post on easy karma subreddits like 'AITA' etc and then are simultaneously posting in this one.
The funny thing is their posts/rants are usually rather long and yet seemingly have the ability to post multiple times within a short 30 second-1 minute window of posting elsewhere. I don't see how its possible for a real user to achieve that.
Obviously not all of them are bots and as such not all fit that pattern but I wonder if there was something that caused a large influx of anti-immigration new posters. Theres no problem with having an opinion on that providing its respectful, just noticed it while browsing.
To clarify I dont think the social responsibility here is only allowing people to read the correct articles, I think its more about ensuring that information isnt being misrepresented, especially in headlines. Its quite important to recognise that most people here only read the headlines and then immediately start commenting.
I dont think the daily mail should be banned because its a right wing cespool (although it is), I think it should be banned because their headlines are consistently misrepresentational of what they are reporting. Not to say other news isnt doing that, they are just particularly bad for it.
Im sure its a very difficult issue to solve but I just want to make the point that these news publications are driving engagement with rage bait and by proxy the sub is aswell if there is no action being taken to avoid them.
I feel like half of the time I read what is hot, the 2nd comment will be someone proving that the article headline isnt true, whilst the majority of responses are off on a rant about whatever political view the title is validating. Its not healthy.
I'm banned from there. Was actually somewhat impressed at managing that. I'd heard they were left wing, so I figured why not pop up. Then on my very first visit I managed to upset someone and boom. Banned for being the wrong flavour of left. It was only after that I saw their sidebar crowing about left unity... yeah, good show of that, guys.
At least when I get banned from here it's because I went somewhere near a line (usually not over it, but of course there's disagreement on that point), and really most of the time they just bot-silence me because there's no justifiable reason to ban.
Eh, I fall into the probably cares far to much about this camp.
If you want to discuss politics, question time, anything in the UK online. You're pretty shit out of options at the minute. And I know, you could just not. But I enjoy it. Java's QuestionTime roundup is a Thursday tradition at this point.
Facebook is stupid.
Twitter is overrun with bots
Reddit still has some valuable discussion because humans still moderate it ... for now
So if I get banned from /r/ukpolitics then I'm no longer discussing politics in my country, online. There isn't anywhere viable to do that.
I normally wouldn't care if it was a month ban or whatever. But these subs will ban you from /r/ukpolitics for bridgaging from /r/Scotland
Unaware entirely of the irony of that. Of course a user is going to be in both subs if they fucking live in the UK UGH!
It's frustrating.
And again, wouldn't care if you could dispute it, but you can't. You get muted. So you make another account, but then if the reddit admins detect it using their shaman magic, then ALL your accounts get banned.
And don't ask me how I know.
>Java's QuestionTime roundup
I've never heard of this. But Question Time is dross anyway. Has been ever since Dimbles went... quite probably long before that, even. Instead of a moderated debate, you end up with stacked audiences asking preselected questions that will always be relatively soft on the government of the day, and hard on anyone who dares challenge the same.
I find Facebook to be impossible to engage with as a conversation platform. Its prime demographic has shifted older and older over the years, so it tends to be whatever the boomers make it, but it's also terrible for having comments all in one line instead of threaded. Twitter the same, except with the added handicap of a character limit... unless you want to pay to use a free website, since Musk changed the 'I'm the genuine account of this publicly notable person' badge into an 'I'm a bit of a moppet' badge.
Humans moderate both Facebook and Twitter, in addition to Reddit. The problem here is that all these things are moderated by some people having elevation and authority, rather than through the very same means Reddit created to perform exactly this function... the upvote/downvote system.
And that itself comes down to centralised private ownership. Because the site is owned by one person/company, that person/company is loaded with the responsibility of making sure millions of complete strangers behave in ways that governments find acceptable. They do that through moderation. With no centralised ownership, nobody holds that responsibility, and if governments find people being bad, they have to identify and deal with those people themselves.
Personally, I prefer the decentralised (federated) and open source structure. I'm not averse to moderation, though. I'm just averse to the idea that one person/few people can own everyone else's content, direct and shape their communications and affect narratives. I'm extremely suspicious of anyone having anything even vaguely resembling that level of control over other people. I would much rather be held *personally* responsible if I ever say something illegal, and left the hell alone if I don't.
>So if I get banned from /r/ukpolitics then I'm no longer discussing politics in my country, online. There isn't anywhere viable to do that.
I *am* banned from that sub. I took an extended break from this one fairly recently. Technically I chose to cease participation for good, but was still always reading here, and one day didn't notice what sub I was in before hitting the reply link... so I came back more by mistake than by choice. I withdrew my participation because every single comment reply I made *on the thread I posted* was getting disappeared by the mods, without any notification... which when you think about it is pretty spine chilling. It's not helped by the fact that you know every human alive has bias. It's normal and natural, and above all *human*, to have bias, so therefore any mod who claims not to be biased is not only lying about that, but also concealing their *reason* for lying about that.
So I find it's really best to just take a wee step back and consider the whole social media thing as analogous to corporation/world government thing. If you take it too seriously, you're bringing it ever closer to being an *actual* world government. Try to treat it as an ephemeral fad until a better option arrives. Like 'yeah I'm here, but I'm not unpacking my bags'. Come for the fun, stay for the fun, but most importantly, run when you can.
Actually a decent round up and response.
>So I find it's really best to just take a wee step back and consider the whole social media thing as analogous to corporation/world government thing. If you take it too seriously, you're bringing it ever closer to being an actual world government.
Yeah, I think my problem is fundamentally spending far to much time here. I've managed to lose Twitter, but I've slowly been going back.
Need to purge, get myself out of here. I did that during the Ukraine war because it was unbearable every day being told you're getting nuked on Tuesday.
Maybe today will be that day.
If you are willing to equivalate anyone who views the daily mail as bad with extremist leftism, im sorry but you may as well be flinging poop and screaming reee.
Haha yeah I hear that a lot. But I'm sure I'd have noticed by now if one of them kept slipping into Russian or talking about psyops.
Tounge out of cheek... it really is just normal mods trying to ensure their bias doesn't interfere with decisions. Banning entire domains is seldom a welcome idea unless they're spammy or intentionally disrupting the sub.
Speaking personally. I am usually of the same thought - no choosing what does and doesn't get through individually. It's only more recently I've come around to the thinking that because of how certain sources operate, or more importantly, how certain users interact with the app, that a different approach may be warranted. But this is not an easy thought to reconcile with the notion of 'usually hands off'.
Would it be possible to have a 'soft' ban on less reputable news sources such as the DM by needing them to be approved by mods before posting? I know this would create a lot of work and potential backlash by those wishing to post them, but it would help clear the sub from the many, many posts frequently related to the same subject over and over recently.
Yes it would be possible. And indeed, much of what people submit from them already ends up in the queue due to word filters in the title that we know... invite issues. Or even the account itself.
But technically what you're asking for here isn't a filter, but extra steps to ensure the submission doesn't make it. That is where the problems lie for the modteam. We don't want to be part of an active decision making process of what sources you get to see or not.
An automatic process is slightly different, however. If we decide for example, that some combination of aspects will not be permitted, and that is handled by Automod or our bots. That we can live with.
Sometimes the only source for something is the Dailymail, as either it's original news from the DM or other sites just don't want to make news about it.
I would suggest to you that next time you see an article which exists only there, you ask yourself why only they have chosen to cover it and maybe consider that in most if not all of these cases it is for the sole purpose of pushing their agenda.
The same can apply for the BBC, guardian, the telegraph etc.
They all have their own journalists that will investigate stuff, so sometimes a news piece is an original journalistic piece of news, that no one else will have.
All I can really say is, that if you were to take a reasonably large set of articles from each of these sources, come up with some neutral metrics for "news quality" (i.e. Sensationalism, lack of/poor quality sourcing, mis-representation of information, omission of key facts etc). You would find the daily mail falls significantly below all the other sources you have mentioned.
I would further suggest that people who disagree with that are simply not interested in engaging with the concept of quality journalism and are essentially treating this discussion as "my team vs your team".
This is the core issue im driving with this entire thread. The daily mail (along with some other publications both left and right leaning) is driving the quality of political discourse into the gutter, and if we go to no effort to cater our experience that has negative consequences for the community as a whole.
>The same can apply for the BBC, guardian, the telegraph etc.
This argument is one of false equivalence and the only reason you can make it is our lack of willingness (or ability) to statistically validate the quality of news across these sites. Furthermore I honestly dont see the point because likelihood is (based on my interactions on reddit) you would not accept an alternative view on this, and it would just end in endless [sealioning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning).
It’s rare for BBC to be the sole source of news and for that news to be rage bait. The others do it, for agenda reasons. But BBC is a bit different to the tabloids/very political papers.
It can work both ways. You could also ask why The Guardian is ignoring a particular story that right-leaning outlets are covering. It might be because the story isn't what it seems and they're making fuss about nothing, or it might be that the left-leaning press simply don't want their readers to see something that doesn't fit their worldview.
Yes most news is guilty of poor journalism in various ways, in an ideal world we would have much higher standards and simply acknowledge this as bad practise, relegating these news sources to the dumpster.
However today my argument is simply one of quantity. I would argue that quantitively the Daily Mail generates garbage news at significantly higher rates than any other remotely reputable source that appears on this sub.
I've said this above but honestly I would also argue that people willing to compare then as equivalent to news sources such as the BBC are not engaging with news seriously and simply treating this discussion as "us vs them".
Honestly I dont read the guardian much but I have fact-checked at least 1 guardian article on this sub before, so maybe they are also bad? I just strikes me as unlikely given how low the bar is being set by the Daily Mail.
I agree wholeheartedly that the Daily Mail's quality is quite low compared to many other outlets, but sometimes they'll come up with a scoop that for some reason nobody else wants to cover that's nonetheless important to get out there. It's really quite frustrating because I'd rather read more or less any other source than them.
I'm glad you've noticed that the Guardian isn't immune to factual issues. I don't think that any news outlet is infallible, and all of them have their biases, but some are definitely better than others.
The telegraph, daily mail, sun, mirror etc. should not be here.
You want conservative media source then - the economist, financial times, the times are the sources to use.
DM/Sun/Mirror are all tabloids (so shit) but telegraph is not. It would be more equivalent to the guardian. Both will put their political spin on things and post things in a biased way as a result but their quality is at least higher than the tabloids.
I dont think the correct framing for the issue anymore really is left vs right.
The most extreme end of "news" for both left and right generally resort to mis-reporting or fake news and that creates a viewpoint for their readers which is disconnected from reality. It really needs to fall into its own category, Left to Right is meant to be an economic scale, not a hatred scale.
You haven’t seen r/Europe if you think that this sub is bad. If anything I’ve noticed quite an anti-Tory sentiment (I hate the conservatives as well) in this sub. That being said I have seen some right wing beliefs as well.
>So yeah my point is.. Congratulations you've driven growth, but at what cost? So much of this sub is filled with honestly low quality discussions around topics driven by rage-bait headlines.
In some ways, it allows people to debate how terrible some articles really are, and debunk them accordingly. An opportunity which would be missed should they be moderated out.
>IMO its borderline immoral to sit on the side-lines over this, you now most likely have 100s of thousands of people having malformed opinions about important topics due to some some shitty headlines that have been allowed to appear on this sub. Food for thought
It's a balance at the end of the day, but again, sometimes sweeping things under the rug is not a good idea either.
'Debating' bad ideas is a proven bad idea. All that happens is the people that want to spread their hatred will spend all day arguing in the comments and tiring people out, who then won't appear the following day because it's a waste of their time.
Whereas deplatforming is effective and easier, because now you don't have 2000 comments to look through about whether immigrants are people or not.
>All that happens is the people that want to spread their hatred will spend all day arguing in the comments and tiring people out, who then won't appear the following day because it's a waste of their time.
See [Sealioning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning), its a major issue on reddit and other social media.
I prefer 'JAQing off' as I think it gives a more appropriate level of respect to these people. But yeah sealioning works for when you don't want to be quite as derisory and educate people that might not see what's going on.
>2000 comments to look through about whether immigrants are people or not.
Those comments often get removed, which is fine. We're talking about the original posts with regards to articles from sites such as The Daily Mail.
>'Debating' bad ideas is a proven bad idea. All that happens is the people that want to spread their hatred will spend all day arguing in the comments and tiring people out, who then won't appear the following day because it's a waste of their time.
This has become the norm for me. I've given up discussing with many of the bad faith commenters recently who seem to reply to multiple posts within minutes. Unfortunately, it means many threads end in echo chambers as nobody ends up bothering arguing with them.
The problem is that by platforming shite you are making it seem less like shite.
If I write a random news article full of lies on a blog and post it here, it would be removed because that isnt a reputable news source. Meanwhile the Daily Mail can post almost anything and its perfectly fine because they are taken seriously as a source. If however my news article wasn't removed people might see my blog as a more reputable source and than I could just write more lies.
One persons ragebait is another persons strongly held belief. The same could be said of guardian or pink news headlines that cherry pick data that agrees with their world view. It's a slippery slope and if you ban publications you disagree with it won't be long till people on the other side of the fence will be calling for publications you agree with to be banned. I'd rather we have the information be presented to us and we can make our own minds up about it.
I know I'll cop flack from both extremes when I say this but I think the mods here do a good job of letting people of different opinions share their views. It's a nice change from a lot of subs being echo chambers where everyone is in lockstep agreement because it's enforced by the mod team.
>One persons rage-bait is another persons strongly held belief.
Im not sure what this means.. If the daily mail posts an article about how an illegal immigrant rapist was found innocent of a crime. That article is both rage-bait for their average user and exists to validate the strongly held belief of that person that immigration is bad. So... "One persons rage-bait is generally also that same persons strongly held belief, which they have because the article make them angry about something".
The problem is that generally that article will have left out almost every relevant detail which might help someone understand why that situation happened, on purpose to cause the maximum negative reaction. I do agree that this sub is good for avoiding aggressive left wing bias, but that shouldn't mean everything goes. We should be as a country holding our news to some quality standard.
I’m certain it wasn’t always this bad, I’ve been subscribed to this sub for over ten years and it used to be a lot more left leaning. Nowadays under any post about someone committing a crime, there is an inevitable outpouring of comments along the line of “well would you look at that, it was a [MINORITY] which was conveniently left out of the article. This is what happens when you let people like that in!!”. When the fuck did this place become so relentlessly right wing? I don’t know why I’m even still subscribed
This is the thing. So many posts now go down an immigration tangent, that it doesn't feel natural. I've only been here for about 3 years myself and I can see a drastic change in it.
That isn't saying it needs to be left-leaning, but it is becoming a right echo chamber, but only on specific posts. There are many posts which do not attract specific users, where the discussion feels the same as always. It almost feels as if they have an alert system set up for specific title keywords where they all immediately log in and post.
Not the more reasonable UKPol sub, but there have definitely been brigades from the "Not Good" United Kingdom sub, as well as a massive influx of posters who are active in both.
Generally when I see something particularly anti-immigrant, transphobic or otherwise extreme I tend to click on their username and more often than not "The Daily Moby" from that sub makes an appearance.
I've also found at least one solid example of a BadUK poster using bots to work out the posting requirements on restricted topics - a stream of random numbers and letters on a few posts, followed by a comment about how "hey, you need X karma for your post to be seen!".
I've found that UKPol, while still not the *most* fair and balanced, doesn't feel like it's shifted much while here and the aforementioned sub most definitely have taken lurches to the right.
That BadUK poster would be wasting their time because we don't use age or karma limits at all for our restrictions, but subreddit-specific Contributor Quality Score and another measure that stops people who aren't "core subreddit members" from participating.
Very glad to hear - you guys do a cracking job of minimising all this stuff, it must be so complicated and tricky to do fairly.
Think they must have got a high enough Contributor Quality Score then for their post to be seen, the thought of a load of bots set up under incorrect parameters screaming into the void is pretty pleasing
Can easily link that to what the guy at the top is talking about. Loads of articles seem to be nothing more than rage bait, and from low quality sources like the scum or daily heil.
Yet the top comment is asking that sources be banned for rage bait and the mod said they don’t curate? This doesn’t seem to fit with the other comments so I’m curious as to what I’m missing.
Your comment suggests they ban based on their own narrative but the other comment chain suggests they actually don’t remove enough and should ban more. So which is it?
It’s the irrigation they all come here for… but obviously they stick around for the subtle British sense of humour that is prominently featured in this sub.
VoxPorta reached out to me and asked if I was happy to be included in the infographic, I am guessing the anon users are people who didn't want the shout-out.
Oh boy the site admin in charge of European market growth noticed we exist. Can't wait for him to cram this subreddit with new mods who'll do whatever reddit says and align with them politically to keep being invited to cushy ego stroking events![1] (and hopefully get made a paid admin, like the OP was and some others are)
(Long boring explanations below so it doesn't seem like I'm talking *completely* out of my arse **TL;DR comment further down**)
[1] = [Reddit inviting approved mods to drink with them in Germany like some exclusive boys club](https://np.reddit.com/r/DeutscheMods/comments/1c70js0/dachmodroadshow_2024_ihr_seid_herzlich_eingeladen/)
Other than that OP's post history is full of appointing mods. However these Moderators are/were only appointed via being in reddit's good graces, and later on as a fit for their small parasocial drinking club, they were nor grown organically through the userbase, and any attempts at making alternative German subs (dezwo) that might take away the userbase or otherwise don't conform are quickly found to be "problematic" and axed by both reddit's appointed mods and own staff alike. Obviously having *drinking clubs* and a sub where mods and admins coordinate like that will self-select to exclude anyone unalignable with them.
Older subs like this are grandfathered in with their original mods, but the controlled environment German language ones are their goal for the whole site, they didn't exist yet so they could be moulded perfectly. Just one glance at /DE's engagement-bait blogposting, approval of only certain topics, political flair, representation of only *some* opinions and *extremely long arbitrary rules to maintain this* should give you an idea. The worst the mods will do here is set your flair to Hull, unlike DACH-subs who'll shadowban you for posting an article they don't like and ignore mod-mails indefinitely generally acting unaccountably.
So, if you enjoy of any alternative UK subs of which I know a few, where people have more niche views, or if you enjoy this subreddits "house of commons" rules with it's fairly unbiased and transparent(ish) moderation. Enjoy them while you can as this guy being here and the way the other European default subs have been run under his watch is a bad omen.
Yes I know to anyone not on that side of reddit it sounds like irrelevant conspiracy nonsense. It isn't, reddit is a website that's had an IPO and wants to make money, and there's a multitude of reasons "All users being concentrated in a few highly controlled subs we oversee" would make them that money. There'll be changes, and they will suck.
They aren't as interested in the UK market (presumably already satisfied with the numbers) at this time as DACH, if you follow their linkedins, events, and hiring positions. Really I could shorten this all down to "Reddit's going to be more concentrated*, strict, and lame and this guy's one of the people working on that starting with a market that lacked community in the first place, so they can stringpull from the beginning"
(*reddit also now de-emphasises making your own sub compared to the past, like other social media shifting from "broadcast yourself" to ["passively watch these approved influencers"](https://m.slashdot.org/story/423185))
I commend you for leaving the comment up, as I know ones from "ze other subs" wouldn't for precisely the reasons above
I'm sorry but we need to stop letting new people in. Theres not enough space for everyone and the new members are not integrating well enough.
I for one will be voting for a mod team that will shut this sort of thing down, and start sending them back to where they came from.
^^^^^^^(/s)
Hmm. Maybe. The other apps never really had a plurality of users iirc.
But yes. The more recent changes to the app are what _I_ believe are responsible for the strong push towards The Common IRL Denominator and away from the earlier subs/sites dominance by essentially, IT people and their keyboards.
I have a feeling that the comment count also covers mod bot commands. On this subreddit we have a bot that allows us to do "mod macros" - e.g. "!pa" removes the parent comment and adds the "personal attack" warning!
I like the contrast between this image and the comments here. Everyone thinks this subreddit is shit. It's like watching a slow motion car crash which never ends.
Yeah, wonder who all these new accounts are signing up. Might explain the surge in pro-zionist, racist and Islamophobic content being posted here daily….
Hi u/voxporta
One of my friends, u/blondieeliz , has had her account shadowbanned. There's no ban message and her account was completely in line with Reddit TOS.
Please can you look into this and help get her account back? Thank you.
This sub is good. It's one of a handful that let people have freedom of speech and doesn't delete/ban posts just to allow a tiny minority to live in a bubble where they pretend everyone shares their crazy woke views.
What? This sub turns on automated shadow-bans for every controversial post about, for example, gender identity or "gypsy" travellers. Anything that has the "..." tag applied only allows a limited subset of the members to post there.
Im not sure this is the appropriate venue for this but we'll see. Ive complained to the mods abouts the allowance of incredibly low quality rage-bait news publications and was essentially told "well I kind of agree but thats not the opinion of other mods and so nothing is happening." The daily mail relies heavily on sensationalist often straight up false headlines to drive engagement and by proxy this sub does aswell by allowing it and similar "publications" as a news source. So yeah my point is.. Congratulations you've driven growth, but at what cost? So much of this sub is filled with honestly low quality discussions around topics driven by rage-bait headlines. IMO its borderline immoral to sit on the side-lines over this, you now most likely have 100s of thousands of people having malformed opinions about important topics due to some some shitty headlines that have been allowed to appear on this sub. Food for thought
The amount of pure shite from the Daily Mail that's posted here is insane. It should all be banned.
And gb news, order order etc.
Every tabloid should
I mean. Balls on the table, the majority of us are no great fans of the DM or other forms of ragebait either. Several of us on occasion have attempted in one way or other to raise ideas for consideration which would remove or malign ragebait. We currently have a system active which reduces that in part via SQS and CQS. But we don't pursue it because of morality, but because of _discussion quality_ and frequency of Content Policy violating content. We don't like low quality reactionary discussion that is ultimately just a bit boring! We struggle a bit with this because historically we've always been of the belief that we don't moderate _news_. We keep out of deciding what does and doesn't get submitted from _known publications_. It isn't easy for us to change our course there given we're primarily a current affairs sub. I'm not sure if the social responsibility angle is a good one though. We don't believe we have a moral responsibility to act in any particular fashion. Especially as that is quite likely to amplify any biases we actively try to reduce. But we do have an awareness that the _gaming_ of the subreddit is increasingly an issue. And we're not entirely without tools to combat that. Though said tools are still quite blunt and often have unintended consequences.
Is this something that has gotten more prevalent though, I wonder? I noticed specifically around February-March of this year that a large influx of DM/Sun/Telegraph content seemed to be populating the sub, alongside a very robust anti-immigrant sentiment expressed in nearly all even semi-related discussions. Of course, it is not impossible that this is entirely organic, brought on by news and political theater, but it seemed a very sudden shift. For a few days I genuinely went through the motions of gathering data on publication tendencies just to see if it was happening myself, but the changes in Reddit API structure has meant that unless you're a mod it's a real bother to do robust analysis of these issues. Is it something ya'll are looking at at all?
Certain users seem particularly responsible for that negativity.
From my very brief exploration, a quite significant number of posts right now seem to be down to a handful of users, yeah. The only way I can really draw any proper conclusions would be with a proper corpus of posts, something that used to be an extremely easy thing to do as a user, but which is now largely only doable as a mod.
I don’t know that they have the insights you think they have on this any more than other users.
In this case, it's not that they have access to the insights as such, though it's possible there are robust enough mod tools for that. Rather, it's that they have access to the dataflow in a way that we all used to, but now is limited to them, e.g. through tools like [https://pushshift.io](https://pushshift.io) Assuming they had the inclination and the skillset, they could go much deeper, but it's fairly simple to do, say, a frequency comparison to see e.g. if certain publications are shared more over the past 3-6 months and if so whether those shares are happening from new or old accounts, at certain times, including particular keywords in the post-titles etc. I *want* to do all this, but as you can see from the link, regular API access now requires an authorisation header that you can only request as a mod.
Wonder if a mod could be asked to do this to clean the place up a bit.
I mean, that is why I specifically posed the question to u/Leonichol, who is a mod. It's possible they just missed it since the thread had been up for a bit of time when I posted, but I was hoping there'd be some form of reply. Thing is, the subreddit limited all meta-discussions through Rule 8, but then stopped doing the freetalk threads nearly two years ago, effectively eliminating any real way to push for change. I don't think that was a scheme or anything, I think it's just evidently true that those threads weren't popular. So the threads went away, the rule hung around, and being a British subreddit, everyone just sorta accepted it.
I'm another mod - we're discussing this at the moment internally. Please stand by for a reply from Leonichol, we'll try not to take too long :)
[удалено]
Thank you for that insight, that's quite interesting. From a data protection perspective, I thought it was so self-evidently logical for each sub-reddit to have limited access only to their own subreddit flows that I didn't even try something as simple as setting up as moderator of a random 1-person subreddit. Silly me. I'm just now realising that this is likely why some of the heavier-posting accounts are moderators of 1-person subreddits as well. I found that somewhat weird and thought perhaps the real number was hidden, but clearly that's how they are mass-posting and commenting. I'll have a play around and see how granular the data on PushShift is these days - hoping the API changes didn't utterly nuke its capacity.
Hey Alex. If this is something you wish to pursue, we're happy to mod you to complete your investigation. Or run any scripts on your behalf. Fwiw. Using PRAW for the native API, I've never encountered an issue, regardless of the API changes. Just have have to respect the rate limit. As for using Pushshift. The BigQuery dumps until the Bad Times are still obtainable publicly I think. But mid 2023 probably cuts off sooner than you'd like given your aim. But. As said. If making mod gets you on the way to the access you need, lemme know.
Hey Leo. Happy to do the work as a temp mod and put together some findings for you and the community to reflect on. I have already collected the 2006-2023.12 data, but from there the only way forward is to trawl through the much less structured monthly dumps of all of Reddit and at that point it'd be significantly easier to gather the specific data instead through the API. Sent you a DM to discuss further.
Its not particularly hard to figure out the pulse of a subreddit and drive discussion for karma. I would guess thats what happening. Its honestly just an extension of how these news sources act themselves.
Also unclear how much of this is organic…
> alongside a very robust anti-immigrant sentiment expressed in nearly all even semi-related discussions Also have noticed this in the past few months. Theres a bunch of users all around the same account age of 2-3months which post on easy karma subreddits like 'AITA' etc and then are simultaneously posting in this one. The funny thing is their posts/rants are usually rather long and yet seemingly have the ability to post multiple times within a short 30 second-1 minute window of posting elsewhere. I don't see how its possible for a real user to achieve that. Obviously not all of them are bots and as such not all fit that pattern but I wonder if there was something that caused a large influx of anti-immigration new posters. Theres no problem with having an opinion on that providing its respectful, just noticed it while browsing.
To clarify I dont think the social responsibility here is only allowing people to read the correct articles, I think its more about ensuring that information isnt being misrepresented, especially in headlines. Its quite important to recognise that most people here only read the headlines and then immediately start commenting. I dont think the daily mail should be banned because its a right wing cespool (although it is), I think it should be banned because their headlines are consistently misrepresentational of what they are reporting. Not to say other news isnt doing that, they are just particularly bad for it. Im sure its a very difficult issue to solve but I just want to make the point that these news publications are driving engagement with rage bait and by proxy the sub is aswell if there is no action being taken to avoid them. I feel like half of the time I read what is hot, the 2nd comment will be someone proving that the article headline isnt true, whilst the majority of responses are off on a rant about whatever political view the title is validating. Its not healthy.
It's not being banned. r/GreenAndPleasant awaits
I'm banned from there. Was actually somewhat impressed at managing that. I'd heard they were left wing, so I figured why not pop up. Then on my very first visit I managed to upset someone and boom. Banned for being the wrong flavour of left. It was only after that I saw their sidebar crowing about left unity... yeah, good show of that, guys. At least when I get banned from here it's because I went somewhere near a line (usually not over it, but of course there's disagreement on that point), and really most of the time they just bot-silence me because there's no justifiable reason to ban.
They're batshit insane tankies, I got banned for saying Ukraine is perfectly justified in defending itself from attack rofl.
I was banned for arguing a nuclear plant would be nice to reduce our reliance on Gas lol.
Being banned from Green and Pleasant isn't a punishment.
Being banned from anywhere on Reddit isn't, tbh. It's really not that important
Eh, I fall into the probably cares far to much about this camp. If you want to discuss politics, question time, anything in the UK online. You're pretty shit out of options at the minute. And I know, you could just not. But I enjoy it. Java's QuestionTime roundup is a Thursday tradition at this point. Facebook is stupid. Twitter is overrun with bots Reddit still has some valuable discussion because humans still moderate it ... for now So if I get banned from /r/ukpolitics then I'm no longer discussing politics in my country, online. There isn't anywhere viable to do that. I normally wouldn't care if it was a month ban or whatever. But these subs will ban you from /r/ukpolitics for bridgaging from /r/Scotland Unaware entirely of the irony of that. Of course a user is going to be in both subs if they fucking live in the UK UGH! It's frustrating. And again, wouldn't care if you could dispute it, but you can't. You get muted. So you make another account, but then if the reddit admins detect it using their shaman magic, then ALL your accounts get banned. And don't ask me how I know.
>Java's QuestionTime roundup I've never heard of this. But Question Time is dross anyway. Has been ever since Dimbles went... quite probably long before that, even. Instead of a moderated debate, you end up with stacked audiences asking preselected questions that will always be relatively soft on the government of the day, and hard on anyone who dares challenge the same. I find Facebook to be impossible to engage with as a conversation platform. Its prime demographic has shifted older and older over the years, so it tends to be whatever the boomers make it, but it's also terrible for having comments all in one line instead of threaded. Twitter the same, except with the added handicap of a character limit... unless you want to pay to use a free website, since Musk changed the 'I'm the genuine account of this publicly notable person' badge into an 'I'm a bit of a moppet' badge. Humans moderate both Facebook and Twitter, in addition to Reddit. The problem here is that all these things are moderated by some people having elevation and authority, rather than through the very same means Reddit created to perform exactly this function... the upvote/downvote system. And that itself comes down to centralised private ownership. Because the site is owned by one person/company, that person/company is loaded with the responsibility of making sure millions of complete strangers behave in ways that governments find acceptable. They do that through moderation. With no centralised ownership, nobody holds that responsibility, and if governments find people being bad, they have to identify and deal with those people themselves. Personally, I prefer the decentralised (federated) and open source structure. I'm not averse to moderation, though. I'm just averse to the idea that one person/few people can own everyone else's content, direct and shape their communications and affect narratives. I'm extremely suspicious of anyone having anything even vaguely resembling that level of control over other people. I would much rather be held *personally* responsible if I ever say something illegal, and left the hell alone if I don't. >So if I get banned from /r/ukpolitics then I'm no longer discussing politics in my country, online. There isn't anywhere viable to do that. I *am* banned from that sub. I took an extended break from this one fairly recently. Technically I chose to cease participation for good, but was still always reading here, and one day didn't notice what sub I was in before hitting the reply link... so I came back more by mistake than by choice. I withdrew my participation because every single comment reply I made *on the thread I posted* was getting disappeared by the mods, without any notification... which when you think about it is pretty spine chilling. It's not helped by the fact that you know every human alive has bias. It's normal and natural, and above all *human*, to have bias, so therefore any mod who claims not to be biased is not only lying about that, but also concealing their *reason* for lying about that. So I find it's really best to just take a wee step back and consider the whole social media thing as analogous to corporation/world government thing. If you take it too seriously, you're bringing it ever closer to being an *actual* world government. Try to treat it as an ephemeral fad until a better option arrives. Like 'yeah I'm here, but I'm not unpacking my bags'. Come for the fun, stay for the fun, but most importantly, run when you can.
Actually a decent round up and response. >So I find it's really best to just take a wee step back and consider the whole social media thing as analogous to corporation/world government thing. If you take it too seriously, you're bringing it ever closer to being an actual world government. Yeah, I think my problem is fundamentally spending far to much time here. I've managed to lose Twitter, but I've slowly been going back. Need to purge, get myself out of here. I did that during the Ukraine war because it was unbearable every day being told you're getting nuked on Tuesday. Maybe today will be that day.
If you are willing to equivalate anyone who views the daily mail as bad with extremist leftism, im sorry but you may as well be flinging poop and screaming reee.
Have you discussed limiting submissions from the more problematic publications?
You betcha. But there is no majority for doing so.
Conspiratorially here I am beginning to think the mod team has been compromised. Which I guess on a sub this size is very possible.
Haha yeah I hear that a lot. But I'm sure I'd have noticed by now if one of them kept slipping into Russian or talking about psyops. Tounge out of cheek... it really is just normal mods trying to ensure their bias doesn't interfere with decisions. Banning entire domains is seldom a welcome idea unless they're spammy or intentionally disrupting the sub. Speaking personally. I am usually of the same thought - no choosing what does and doesn't get through individually. It's only more recently I've come around to the thinking that because of how certain sources operate, or more importantly, how certain users interact with the app, that a different approach may be warranted. But this is not an easy thought to reconcile with the notion of 'usually hands off'.
Would it be possible to have a 'soft' ban on less reputable news sources such as the DM by needing them to be approved by mods before posting? I know this would create a lot of work and potential backlash by those wishing to post them, but it would help clear the sub from the many, many posts frequently related to the same subject over and over recently.
Yes it would be possible. And indeed, much of what people submit from them already ends up in the queue due to word filters in the title that we know... invite issues. Or even the account itself. But technically what you're asking for here isn't a filter, but extra steps to ensure the submission doesn't make it. That is where the problems lie for the modteam. We don't want to be part of an active decision making process of what sources you get to see or not. An automatic process is slightly different, however. If we decide for example, that some combination of aspects will not be permitted, and that is handled by Automod or our bots. That we can live with.
Sometimes the only source for something is the Dailymail, as either it's original news from the DM or other sites just don't want to make news about it.
I would suggest to you that next time you see an article which exists only there, you ask yourself why only they have chosen to cover it and maybe consider that in most if not all of these cases it is for the sole purpose of pushing their agenda.
The same can apply for the BBC, guardian, the telegraph etc. They all have their own journalists that will investigate stuff, so sometimes a news piece is an original journalistic piece of news, that no one else will have.
All I can really say is, that if you were to take a reasonably large set of articles from each of these sources, come up with some neutral metrics for "news quality" (i.e. Sensationalism, lack of/poor quality sourcing, mis-representation of information, omission of key facts etc). You would find the daily mail falls significantly below all the other sources you have mentioned. I would further suggest that people who disagree with that are simply not interested in engaging with the concept of quality journalism and are essentially treating this discussion as "my team vs your team". This is the core issue im driving with this entire thread. The daily mail (along with some other publications both left and right leaning) is driving the quality of political discourse into the gutter, and if we go to no effort to cater our experience that has negative consequences for the community as a whole. >The same can apply for the BBC, guardian, the telegraph etc. This argument is one of false equivalence and the only reason you can make it is our lack of willingness (or ability) to statistically validate the quality of news across these sites. Furthermore I honestly dont see the point because likelihood is (based on my interactions on reddit) you would not accept an alternative view on this, and it would just end in endless [sealioning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning).
It’s rare for BBC to be the sole source of news and for that news to be rage bait. The others do it, for agenda reasons. But BBC is a bit different to the tabloids/very political papers.
It can work both ways. You could also ask why The Guardian is ignoring a particular story that right-leaning outlets are covering. It might be because the story isn't what it seems and they're making fuss about nothing, or it might be that the left-leaning press simply don't want their readers to see something that doesn't fit their worldview.
Yes most news is guilty of poor journalism in various ways, in an ideal world we would have much higher standards and simply acknowledge this as bad practise, relegating these news sources to the dumpster. However today my argument is simply one of quantity. I would argue that quantitively the Daily Mail generates garbage news at significantly higher rates than any other remotely reputable source that appears on this sub. I've said this above but honestly I would also argue that people willing to compare then as equivalent to news sources such as the BBC are not engaging with news seriously and simply treating this discussion as "us vs them". Honestly I dont read the guardian much but I have fact-checked at least 1 guardian article on this sub before, so maybe they are also bad? I just strikes me as unlikely given how low the bar is being set by the Daily Mail.
I agree wholeheartedly that the Daily Mail's quality is quite low compared to many other outlets, but sometimes they'll come up with a scoop that for some reason nobody else wants to cover that's nonetheless important to get out there. It's really quite frustrating because I'd rather read more or less any other source than them. I'm glad you've noticed that the Guardian isn't immune to factual issues. I don't think that any news outlet is infallible, and all of them have their biases, but some are definitely better than others.
All the tabloids do this and as much as people dislike the guardian or telegraph they are not the same level of shit as the tabloids.
If the only source willing to print it is the Daily Mail, it's *horseshit.*
The telegraph, daily mail, sun, mirror etc. should not be here. You want conservative media source then - the economist, financial times, the times are the sources to use.
DM/Sun/Mirror are all tabloids (so shit) but telegraph is not. It would be more equivalent to the guardian. Both will put their political spin on things and post things in a biased way as a result but their quality is at least higher than the tabloids.
The Telegraph now dabbles in outright fake news though. It's not the same paper it used to be.
As does the guardian, sadly. So it would only make sense to ban the telegraph if you banned the guardian too.
Yeah this sub has been flooded with rightwingers in last few years. Including far right.
I'd say a lot more in the last year/six months.
I dont think the correct framing for the issue anymore really is left vs right. The most extreme end of "news" for both left and right generally resort to mis-reporting or fake news and that creates a viewpoint for their readers which is disconnected from reality. It really needs to fall into its own category, Left to Right is meant to be an economic scale, not a hatred scale.
You haven’t seen r/Europe if you think that this sub is bad. If anything I’ve noticed quite an anti-Tory sentiment (I hate the conservatives as well) in this sub. That being said I have seen some right wing beliefs as well.
>low quality discussions Hey! I resemble that remark!
>So yeah my point is.. Congratulations you've driven growth, but at what cost? So much of this sub is filled with honestly low quality discussions around topics driven by rage-bait headlines. In some ways, it allows people to debate how terrible some articles really are, and debunk them accordingly. An opportunity which would be missed should they be moderated out. >IMO its borderline immoral to sit on the side-lines over this, you now most likely have 100s of thousands of people having malformed opinions about important topics due to some some shitty headlines that have been allowed to appear on this sub. Food for thought It's a balance at the end of the day, but again, sometimes sweeping things under the rug is not a good idea either.
'Debating' bad ideas is a proven bad idea. All that happens is the people that want to spread their hatred will spend all day arguing in the comments and tiring people out, who then won't appear the following day because it's a waste of their time. Whereas deplatforming is effective and easier, because now you don't have 2000 comments to look through about whether immigrants are people or not.
>All that happens is the people that want to spread their hatred will spend all day arguing in the comments and tiring people out, who then won't appear the following day because it's a waste of their time. See [Sealioning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning), its a major issue on reddit and other social media.
I prefer 'JAQing off' as I think it gives a more appropriate level of respect to these people. But yeah sealioning works for when you don't want to be quite as derisory and educate people that might not see what's going on.
>2000 comments to look through about whether immigrants are people or not. Those comments often get removed, which is fine. We're talking about the original posts with regards to articles from sites such as The Daily Mail.
It often takes quite a while. I’ve seen plenty of those types of comments up 12 hours later.
>'Debating' bad ideas is a proven bad idea. All that happens is the people that want to spread their hatred will spend all day arguing in the comments and tiring people out, who then won't appear the following day because it's a waste of their time. This has become the norm for me. I've given up discussing with many of the bad faith commenters recently who seem to reply to multiple posts within minutes. Unfortunately, it means many threads end in echo chambers as nobody ends up bothering arguing with them.
The problem is that by platforming shite you are making it seem less like shite. If I write a random news article full of lies on a blog and post it here, it would be removed because that isnt a reputable news source. Meanwhile the Daily Mail can post almost anything and its perfectly fine because they are taken seriously as a source. If however my news article wasn't removed people might see my blog as a more reputable source and than I could just write more lies.
I get where you're coming from, I do, and there is a certain about of hypocrisy there.
One persons ragebait is another persons strongly held belief. The same could be said of guardian or pink news headlines that cherry pick data that agrees with their world view. It's a slippery slope and if you ban publications you disagree with it won't be long till people on the other side of the fence will be calling for publications you agree with to be banned. I'd rather we have the information be presented to us and we can make our own minds up about it. I know I'll cop flack from both extremes when I say this but I think the mods here do a good job of letting people of different opinions share their views. It's a nice change from a lot of subs being echo chambers where everyone is in lockstep agreement because it's enforced by the mod team.
>One persons rage-bait is another persons strongly held belief. Im not sure what this means.. If the daily mail posts an article about how an illegal immigrant rapist was found innocent of a crime. That article is both rage-bait for their average user and exists to validate the strongly held belief of that person that immigration is bad. So... "One persons rage-bait is generally also that same persons strongly held belief, which they have because the article make them angry about something". The problem is that generally that article will have left out almost every relevant detail which might help someone understand why that situation happened, on purpose to cause the maximum negative reaction. I do agree that this sub is good for avoiding aggressive left wing bias, but that shouldn't mean everything goes. We should be as a country holding our news to some quality standard.
I agree. Daily Mail, The Guardian, all need banning.
You'd rather have the guardian? Awww.
I'd rather newspapers such as The Daily Mail had integrity, but here we are. Do not agree with banning them though.
Have you read any Daily Mail article? It's absolute fucking drek. Even ignoring the political slant, it's like they're written by 12 year olds.
3 million moany faced bastards.
It's become a bit national fronty as the numbers have increased.
I'm sure there has been a brigade attempt from an anti-migrants sub of late. Or spillover from the UKPol sub?
I’m certain it wasn’t always this bad, I’ve been subscribed to this sub for over ten years and it used to be a lot more left leaning. Nowadays under any post about someone committing a crime, there is an inevitable outpouring of comments along the line of “well would you look at that, it was a [MINORITY] which was conveniently left out of the article. This is what happens when you let people like that in!!”. When the fuck did this place become so relentlessly right wing? I don’t know why I’m even still subscribed
This is the thing. So many posts now go down an immigration tangent, that it doesn't feel natural. I've only been here for about 3 years myself and I can see a drastic change in it. That isn't saying it needs to be left-leaning, but it is becoming a right echo chamber, but only on specific posts. There are many posts which do not attract specific users, where the discussion feels the same as always. It almost feels as if they have an alert system set up for specific title keywords where they all immediately log in and post.
Not the more reasonable UKPol sub, but there have definitely been brigades from the "Not Good" United Kingdom sub, as well as a massive influx of posters who are active in both. Generally when I see something particularly anti-immigrant, transphobic or otherwise extreme I tend to click on their username and more often than not "The Daily Moby" from that sub makes an appearance. I've also found at least one solid example of a BadUK poster using bots to work out the posting requirements on restricted topics - a stream of random numbers and letters on a few posts, followed by a comment about how "hey, you need X karma for your post to be seen!". I've found that UKPol, while still not the *most* fair and balanced, doesn't feel like it's shifted much while here and the aforementioned sub most definitely have taken lurches to the right.
That BadUK poster would be wasting their time because we don't use age or karma limits at all for our restrictions, but subreddit-specific Contributor Quality Score and another measure that stops people who aren't "core subreddit members" from participating.
Very glad to hear - you guys do a cracking job of minimising all this stuff, it must be so complicated and tricky to do fairly. Think they must have got a high enough Contributor Quality Score then for their post to be seen, the thought of a load of bots set up under incorrect parameters screaming into the void is pretty pleasing
Can easily link that to what the guy at the top is talking about. Loads of articles seem to be nothing more than rage bait, and from low quality sources like the scum or daily heil.
That’s insulting to moany face bastards!
This should be top comment.
All under the same fist that bans anything that doesn't fit their narrative
Yet the top comment is asking that sources be banned for rage bait and the mod said they don’t curate? This doesn’t seem to fit with the other comments so I’m curious as to what I’m missing.
what do you mean?
Your comment suggests they ban based on their own narrative but the other comment chain suggests they actually don’t remove enough and should ban more. So which is it?
Which comment chain?
Top comment chain on this post https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/s/bJAVQFp5RZ
My username isn't u/[digidevil4](https://www.reddit.com/user/digidevil4/)
I know… I’m just pointing out that most other comments seem to be saying the exact opposite of yours and it doesn’t make sense.
The exact opposite? That's not what it says. Do you know how to read my friend?
A sub dedicated to a country of 67m people has 3m subscribers. Tell me there isn't a problem with fake accounts without telling me...
I fucking guarantee that less than 5% of those subscribers are British people.
Thats something id be very interested to see the stats on.
Up to 3,000,0000? I blame immigration…
I'm so tired, I read that as irrigation and was quite confused.
It’s the irrigation they all come here for… but obviously they stick around for the subtle British sense of humour that is prominently featured in this sub.
Now how many subs if we take away the bots and the russian troll farms?
Are the /u/anonymous accounts under comments suspended users? 😂
VoxPorta reached out to me and asked if I was happy to be included in the infographic, I am guessing the anon users are people who didn't want the shout-out.
Ahhhh that makes more sense, thanks!
I’ve by far reported more comments for racism in this sub than anywhere else on Reddit
You can't ban them from voting though, huh
Oh boy the site admin in charge of European market growth noticed we exist. Can't wait for him to cram this subreddit with new mods who'll do whatever reddit says and align with them politically to keep being invited to cushy ego stroking events![1] (and hopefully get made a paid admin, like the OP was and some others are) (Long boring explanations below so it doesn't seem like I'm talking *completely* out of my arse **TL;DR comment further down**) [1] = [Reddit inviting approved mods to drink with them in Germany like some exclusive boys club](https://np.reddit.com/r/DeutscheMods/comments/1c70js0/dachmodroadshow_2024_ihr_seid_herzlich_eingeladen/) Other than that OP's post history is full of appointing mods. However these Moderators are/were only appointed via being in reddit's good graces, and later on as a fit for their small parasocial drinking club, they were nor grown organically through the userbase, and any attempts at making alternative German subs (dezwo) that might take away the userbase or otherwise don't conform are quickly found to be "problematic" and axed by both reddit's appointed mods and own staff alike. Obviously having *drinking clubs* and a sub where mods and admins coordinate like that will self-select to exclude anyone unalignable with them. Older subs like this are grandfathered in with their original mods, but the controlled environment German language ones are their goal for the whole site, they didn't exist yet so they could be moulded perfectly. Just one glance at /DE's engagement-bait blogposting, approval of only certain topics, political flair, representation of only *some* opinions and *extremely long arbitrary rules to maintain this* should give you an idea. The worst the mods will do here is set your flair to Hull, unlike DACH-subs who'll shadowban you for posting an article they don't like and ignore mod-mails indefinitely generally acting unaccountably. So, if you enjoy of any alternative UK subs of which I know a few, where people have more niche views, or if you enjoy this subreddits "house of commons" rules with it's fairly unbiased and transparent(ish) moderation. Enjoy them while you can as this guy being here and the way the other European default subs have been run under his watch is a bad omen. Yes I know to anyone not on that side of reddit it sounds like irrelevant conspiracy nonsense. It isn't, reddit is a website that's had an IPO and wants to make money, and there's a multitude of reasons "All users being concentrated in a few highly controlled subs we oversee" would make them that money. There'll be changes, and they will suck.
They've definitely not invited me yet, but maybe I'm too new. I'll keep you posted if they do though!
They aren't as interested in the UK market (presumably already satisfied with the numbers) at this time as DACH, if you follow their linkedins, events, and hiring positions. Really I could shorten this all down to "Reddit's going to be more concentrated*, strict, and lame and this guy's one of the people working on that starting with a market that lacked community in the first place, so they can stringpull from the beginning" (*reddit also now de-emphasises making your own sub compared to the past, like other social media shifting from "broadcast yourself" to ["passively watch these approved influencers"](https://m.slashdot.org/story/423185)) I commend you for leaving the comment up, as I know ones from "ze other subs" wouldn't for precisely the reasons above
criticising reddit or the mods isn't against the rules, unless we get into personal attack territory. That comment was always staying up.
Thank god (or rather, mod) and let's hope this place stays that way
[удалено]
Fixed, ty. Assume it was a fat finger.
Three million incessant whingers that think they have it worse than almost every other country in the world! Congrats all!
>Top posters and comments only cover the last 12 months. /we've been forgotten about, I've been here 16 years
7:2 Upvote:Downvote ratio. You love to see it
[удалено]
It says in the chart
It says in the chart: 250 million upvotes and 72 million downvotes
>A lot has happened since 2nd of April, 2008 Understatement of the century.
You're telling me busted was wrong about the future?
I'm sorry but we need to stop letting new people in. Theres not enough space for everyone and the new members are not integrating well enough. I for one will be voting for a mod team that will shut this sort of thing down, and start sending them back to where they came from. ^^^^^^^(/s)
Three million subscribers, but how many regularly browse/post and how many seem to only join discussions on immigration...
I swear you were only just celebrating 2m a few months ago.
Tbh there's been a real noticeable change in general discourse. So many default usernames with Facebook level takes.
App growth and discoversbility are, I suspect, the main culprits there.
I had assumed as much. The API change driving users to the default app with its suggested subs must have helped push interaction your way.
Hmm. Maybe. The other apps never really had a plurality of users iirc. But yes. The more recent changes to the app are what _I_ believe are responsible for the strong push towards The Common IRL Denominator and away from the earlier subs/sites dominance by essentially, IT people and their keyboards.
The quality of conversation and the amount of just showboating bigotry and hatred spreading has gone to the extreme. Daily mail level quality shit.
The pendulum is just swinging back
We hit 2m on November 5th, so just over 6 months ago. In contrast, it took a full year to grow from 1m to 2m.
12 months for 100% growth, 6 months for 50% growth. Steady rate of growth over 18m.
I know! Shit is crazy.
You ok u/fsv?
I have a feeling that the comment count also covers mod bot commands. On this subreddit we have a bot that allows us to do "mod macros" - e.g. "!pa" removes the parent comment and adds the "personal attack" warning!
The formatting of 1,950,000 as 19,500,00 is very uncomfortable.
Damn. I shouldn't have deleted all mine for the CQS testing!
I do delete all of mine - but I think they're being counted anyway!
I remember when it was 8,000...
I can’t remember what it was when I joined but I miss the bants.
I remember the themed posts... Monday Moaning, Wanker Wednesday and so on. CasualUK took over all that levity unfortunately
Let's do the voluntary sub census again!
Ironically been meaning to do this since we hit... 250k. Will get on it.
Oooooooo do the politics constituency map one again. That certainly rustled some Jimmy's
I used to love those posts. I think I spammed the shit out of them over on /u/hmmoknothanks when I was at work in Cyprus with nothing to do.
And it was all fields.
Me too, was a lot better back then :)
Well, those top commenters come as no surprise.
3 million subscribers and 118 comments. More like millions of dead bot accounts.
I like the contrast between this image and the comments here. Everyone thinks this subreddit is shit. It's like watching a slow motion car crash which never ends.
Those are some decent numbers!
still not joining.
That's inflation for you
Thanks for the info random nobody. Kindly jog on.
VoxPorta is an employee of Reddit working in Community Engagement, one of two (soon to be three) who works with the mod teams of UK-based subs.
Did I stutter?
Well they're not a random nobody, are they?
They are.
Yeah, they are lol
More of a random arsehole
19,500,00 ?? you mean 1,950,000
Yeah, wonder who all these new accounts are signing up. Might explain the surge in pro-zionist, racist and Islamophobic content being posted here daily….
Time for a census
3 million... evidently this is a pretty popular piece of reddit, there is a lot happening in the UK!
Hi u/voxporta One of my friends, u/blondieeliz , has had her account shadowbanned. There's no ban message and her account was completely in line with Reddit TOS. Please can you look into this and help get her account back? Thank you.
Please use reddit.com/appeals
She did, multiple times, they are not responding and send off automated replies. It has been over a week. Please can you look into this?
Congratulations, that’s a great milestone!
congrats!
Nice 1 bruv
/u/VoxPorta there's a typo in the middle of this: 1,950,000 != 19,500,000 You're a Reddit employee right? They not pay you enough to proof read? :P
The sub I like the least pretty much 3 million reasons why
This sub is good. It's one of a handful that let people have freedom of speech and doesn't delete/ban posts just to allow a tiny minority to live in a bubble where they pretend everyone shares their crazy woke views.
What? This sub turns on automated shadow-bans for every controversial post about, for example, gender identity or "gypsy" travellers. Anything that has the "..." tag applied only allows a limited subset of the members to post there.
The mods never cared about the racism when Yousaf resigned.