Would you please stop using HN for ideological battle? It's against the site guidelines for good reason—it destroys curious conversation in two ways: first by being predictable (so the signal/noise ratio goes down) and second by being inflammatory (so it evokes worse from other people, leading to a downward spiral).

Also, please don't post flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments generally. You've been doing that a lot lately, and we eventually penalize or ban such accounts.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I genuinely think you have it backwards. The SNR went down significantly during the last weeks - which is understandable with events that dominate the news cycle so much. But HN was absolutely flooded with feel-good, no-content articles about just how good the author is, with everyone in the comments chiming in on how good they are and how bad all the opposing voices are.

That is not "signal". Voices like mine and the few others are though. And they are certainly not predictable as they're literally against the overwhelming majority of homogeneous posts in the other direction. The following downward spiral is evidently caused by the majority who doubles and triples down on their virtue signalling - not the people causing the signal/"trouble".

Now I know what you really mean of course. You don't want dissenting opinions. But you shouldn't frame this as a SNR issue.

The existence of bad comments doesn't justify adding more bad comments, and certainly not worse ones. That's how internet forums destroy themselves. Putting all the blame on the other side is just another battle move.

This has nothing to do with not wanting dissenting opinions. That's a cheap thing to say, because everyone always feels like the mods are against their side and secretly supporting the other. The issue is that your comment was obviously in the flamewar style.

Please stop using HN for ideological battle. We've had to warn you about this more than once before.

Are you joking? There's a huge number of cesspools still on reddit. Stuff like thedonald, theredpill, all sorts of blatantly racist/misogynistic communities.

From what I can see the_donald is effectively dead and theredpill is also quarantined so it might as well be, since quarantined subreddits are always eventually banned.

/r/the_donald was quarantined a year ago and hasn't been banned yet.

No, it has effectively been banned. It was forcefully taken over by the administration. While it technically still exists, it actually moved entirely to its own dedicated website.

"Effectively banned" is not the same as banned, and it's these conspicuous half-measures toward /r/the_donald that resulted in criticism from Ellen Pao as noted above, among others.

These are the first examples that come to mind. There are many more with similar userbases that has migrated from them. Don't forget all the Pizzagate/QAnon stuff, incels, etc. Here's a longer list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communiti...

Also, quarantined != banned. It's still on reddit, and those users spread out onto other non-quarantined subreddits and spew the same kind of garbage.

Banning a subreddit doesn't ban it's users.

The problem with having a cesspool is that it attracts lots of those types of people to your site in the first place, and ingrains it in them that that kind of behavior is acceptable. They then start acting like that elsewhere on the site and lower the level of discourse everywhere.

Ban the cesspools and most of those people will actually leave the site for good, as what drew them to it in the first place is now gone. You also no longer have any cesspools serving as negative guideposts for making bad contributions. So if you moderate your site well, and just get rid of this kind of stuff, it ends up much better in the long run.

TD is gone for a long time now.

No, it's not.

https://www.reddit.com/r/the_donald

When I sort by date submitted the last post that came up was 2 months ago. That seems pretty dead to me.

Edit: Also the sidebar says there are 600 active users. I assume that includes me following your link. For comparison /r/news has ~68,000 users as of this writing.

It's really not - look at the dates. There was some bullshit going on, there is nothing left.

> Only approved users may post in this community.

So now it's the truest propaganda machine, you're saying. Approved users only for consumption by a dedicated subscriber base.

No the sub doesn't exist anymore. There was an admin takeover and they left it in this odd "technically existing" state for some reason. TD is gone - you can look for stories about it some months ago.

The top comment on the link you posted is, "Are we back?" Reply is "Still only approved posters I think."

The link itself is to a pinned, mod-posted, announcement link to an article about an executive order to strip social media platforms from liability protections from charges of bias.

The most recent non-announcement post was two months ago.

Other choice top-level comments:

- "Huh and coincidentally I see a TD post on my feed for the first time in months."

- "TD COME BACK"

- "The Phoenix shall rise from the ashes"

- "OMG it’s been so long, I have missed you all my friends!!!"

Meanwhile, taking a jaunt to thedonald.win, shows what is basically a reddit clone with much more activity, easily verifiable with two minutes examination.

I'm not a /r/the_donald reader/subscriber/whatever, and haven't followed whatever reddit drama has transpired, but it's pretty clear they've been shut down for a while.

2000 comments on a post by an approved submitter is the opposite of "been shut down."

To my earlier point:

> So now it's the truest propaganda machine, you're saying. Approved users only for consumption by a dedicated subscriber base.

/r/The_Donald has effectively been archived and marked read-only. There's no or little activity - the link you posted was an exception - all users have moved over to a third party site.

While one could argue that Reddit should have removed the subreddit sooner, I'm not sure that would have done them any favors (see Streisand Effect.)

They opted to strangle the community slowly, hoping it would dissipate. But it just moves elsewhere, like it always does.

that proves the point of the person you are replying to: there is no activity at all; they've moved on.

For the curious, everyone there has moved on to thedonald.win.

I get the feeling they are quite familiar with those communities.

Anecdotally, and interestingly, I've only ever seen the phrase "virtue signal" from the alt-right/white supremacist/Trump supporter group. I think I understand what it's trying to convey, but it seems to be used anytime someone sides with something with which that group disagrees. It's like a "dog whistle" for white supremacists and personally when I see it used, it makes me question everything else that person said.

I don't know. The minorities I talk to tend to be quite aware that some people are engaging in point-scoring for ultimately self-serving purposes. However, they are not usually loud about this observation, so the sentiment might get lost in the noise.

I am a hispanic and this is exactly how I feel. We are not pawns that need to be manipulated for social points.

Really? The lgbtq+ community has huge debates on virtue signaling every year. Many view pride as being completely overtakes by companies virtue signaling.

They are all 'quarintined' subr-ddits, that are not part of the larger community, and are more or less muted until you join them. Not quite the same. Don't get me wrong, I am no fan of r-ddit, but for very different reasons that are not fully relevant to this discussion.

lead-ish mod /r/relationship_advice here

nope.

The horrors we ban for are usually considered (by their submitters) to be perfectly normal, and we often have people starting debates with us about our own rules because other subreddits permit passive bigotry across race, gender, orientation, etc.

There's a lot. You've just closed your eyes to it. We've had mods quit because of the volume of crap.

r/relationship_advice is quite infamous for its extreme stance.

We've got a pretty straightforward stance, really.

We don't tolerate intolerance, and mindful consent is a pre-requisite for all things. That's it.

Amazing how much that weeds out. :)

The approved comments are actually the extreme ones. Eg.: Post: "After 10 years of marriage, today my husband didn't say good morning back to me. Is that normal?". Comments:"OMG the monster is probably planning to kill you, you must leave him at once and ruin his life."

> The approved comments are actually the extreme ones. Eg.: Post: "After 10 years of marriage, today my husband didn't say good morning back to me. Is that normal?". Comments:"OMG the monster is probably planning to kill you, you must leave him at once and ruin his life."

Two things:

1. Post: "After 10 years of marriage, today my husband didn't say good morning back to me. Is that normal?"

These should be reported - they fall afoul of the moral judgment rule. The subreddit is focused specifically on requests for advice, not retrospective analysis. Because of the volume of moral judgment posts we receive, we tend to ban submitters for a day simply because it's written both into the rules and as a pinned post on the sub.

2. "OMG the monster is probably planning to kill you, you must leave him at once and ruin his life."

We're not empowered to do anything about these - the only solution we have is to suggest that people try to disregard guidance that screams "dump" without going into why.

> Well you are well known to ban very good advice on a very specific topic - but we both know that even mentioning that would get me into trouble.

The only advice we ban for are:

1. advice advocating for intolerance against a protected class (e.g. lgbtq+, race, etc.)

2. anything involving violence or suicide, regardless of jokes.

And beyond that, we're obligated to remove submissions involving CSA per Reddit (or Reddit Anti-Evil Operations does it for us), and in such an event we provide resources the submitter can use to seek help or an escape.

It's pretty cut and dry.

> Well you just used the term "protected class". That blows my mind.

https://www.archives.gov/eeo/terminology.html

grep "protected class"

Man I remember how much of a controversy it was when they killed /r/jailbait and a bunch of other subreddits. That was back when it actually seemed like a community with inside jokes about narwhals and bacon and nonsense.

I don't know if their desire to please advertisers is responsible for the fact that it's now a ragebait click farm, but it sure seems like they are connected.

That was a long long time ago, remember when the comments on reddit were actually filled with some intelligent discussion?

The man is married to a black woman and has a biracial child with her who will be seen as black by and large. It is a personal issue to him.

But even if it wasn't a personal issue to him, I'm more disturbed by the number of people who 100% fail to engage with an issue and dismiss it as virtue signalling, as if a person couldn't authentically care about the issue.

Yes, Ohanian is a rich guy, but by stepping away from his role at reddit, it is foregoing likely future income. He is going to spend time working on these issues. Why is that so easy to dismiss?

Why does he have to say it? Because there are jerks out there who will dismiss his actions as virtue signaling. He is stating it is personal and he is committed.

Do complain this much and call it virtue signaling if someone says they served in the armed forces and they love the flag?

>Why does he have to say that he's married to a black woman. That he has a black child. That he is quitting. That he's hiring a BLACKKK person etc. Just do it man, don't make a wave.

Because he's trying to make a statement that racism is wrong, and because he wants the reasons for his resignation to be publically known, of course.

Isn't that obvious?

A post on Reddit the other day said it best:

>People are being radicalized on your site. Ideological violence—murder—is committed by people who were heavily involved in hate communities on reddit that are still not banned as of today. All you jellyfish can muster up is some finger wagging and a yellow triangle to let them know that they've been so naughty that they get an ad-free experience and the inability to give reddit money through awards. Here I am wishing every subreddit could be so privileged.

It seems like you don't have a great understanding of what's going on in the USA right now. This isn't virtue signaling, which is usually more about posting on social media or using a hashtag. You might disagree with the actions he's taken, but Ohanian is taking action, not just paying lip service.

You must be kidding. Please tell me you're kidding. Ever been to /r/the_donald? /r/conspiracy? /r/protectandserve?

r/mgtow, r/metacanada, r/KotakuInAction, r/TumblrinAction, r/unpopularopinion, r/politicalcompassmemes are candidates. The subreddit about the upcoming AAA game "The Last of Us 2" is pretty vile aswell.

If you consider KIA, unpopularopinion and making fun of TLOU2 as vile then I'm not sure what that word even means.

plus: There are regular calls to murder all cops these days on reddit. In plain sight. Just imagine what would happen for any of those "bad" subs if they wouldn't remove those within seconds.

>KIA The mods had to stop in and tell their own subreddit to stop celebrating the death of a trans e-sport player [1]. A year ago or so they also had issues with white supremacists.

>TLOU2 Just some choice picks from a recent thread [2]

"Everyone that is part on lgbtq should go live on an island. I wanna see how long you last. Since you hate straight people. And dont know how to reproduce because you think ass holes feel better than pussy."

"They'd need migration to reach replacement level for their plummetting birth rates "

"Because their fuckery and meddling has brought us to this, be gay in silence instead of shoving ity down everyone's throat. You are the fucking minority. LGBTQ is an evolutuionary dead-end for a reason"

"SJWs need to be castrated. Yikes."

"Gays are parasites. They don’t reproduce but steal instead, corrupting the youth through pedophilia. See: Milo. See: Steve Huffman. Many such cases!"

>unpopular_opinion It used to be pretty questionable a few months ago, but maybe it got better. I haven't really bothered staying up to date on it.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/eho1nb/remi... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/TheLastOfUs2/comments/g9825v/what_t...

KIA is undeniably vile. If you don't consider it vile I'm not sure what that word even means.

Sounds like you aren't fan of those subreddits but should they be shut down if they are not violating the site rules? The fact is that those subs are heavily moderated. If they weren't they'd be the first to go.

The point is that the rules should be changed to disallow those sorts of subreddits. Let those users go somewhere else; reddit has no responsibility to society to host them.

I'm fine with these subreddits, aslong as they're properly moderated and not calling for violence or start brigading other subreddits. When the whole Jessica Price controversy happend there was a lot of new users on r/Guildwars2 that never posted there before or even played the game. I don't agree with them and think they're vile, but aslong as they don't break sitewide rules I'm ok with them.

unpopularopinion and politicalcompassmemes are not even remotely close to being candidates and including them in your list sounds very extreme and politically correct.

None of those even scratch the surface of what used to be on reddit back in the days

Thankfully.

What's wrong with /r/conspiracy?

It has a lot of far right misinformation, fake news and articles from fishy sites. The mods are biased and wont moderate those.

E.g from yesterday https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/gwgv6i/awfully_...

Sounds like typical conspiracy theory behavior to me, not sure what you expected from a conspiracy subreddit or why you would want the subreddit banned.

Outright falsehoods aren't always conspiracies, they usually lie in the unknowns. It's one thing to say Clinton is a secret Chinese sympathizer, it's another thing to say she was born and brought up in China. Many of the fake news things fall into the latter category, just lies designed to promote the far right.

Conspiracy theories used to more neutral like 5 years ago. Now they're exclusively far right and anti-liberal.

The same thing that's wrong with conspiracy theories (e.g. Q). Lunatics flock to platforms that let them disseminate their lies.

but everything is cleanly tagged under /r/conspiracy ?

Yes and the people who populate that subreddit comment everywhere else, too. Same goes for other misogynist/racist/right-wing subreddits. The proliferation of these subreddits leads to a proliferation of low-quality users.

doesn't reddit have that extension (forget the name) to ban users across all subreddits and tag them etc ? (not from the site but for your own browsing)

You're talking about literally thousands of people you'd need to ban.

TD is gone for a long time now. r/protectandserve is a reddit for police officers as far as I know? Not sure what's controversial.

lately its been them sharing memes about "why are protestors so surprised when we gas them" and the like

I don't really see how removing the subreddit would make them any less likely to gas protestors though.

Honestly, I'd've thought anti-police-brutality people would prefer them to share such things publicly for screenshotting purposes and etc.