Just curious, have you spent time looking at the type of comments getting removed?

Have you looked at any of the top threads on Reveddit/Unddit with 75% of the comments gone?

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see how it goes way, way beyond those rules you just listed, into something that can only be described as a petty dictatorship - but with any hundred angry nerds who happened to show up playing the dictator.

Zero transparency, zero due process, no one cares.

This sort of excuse (blindly believing all that matters is "just don't be an asshole on the internet and you have nothing to worry about", "just follow the rules on the sidebar") is exactly how this sort of thing happens and no one bothers to look into it. If Reddit had a button to list the comments arbitrarily removed (like Google shows DMCA request removals) you can be sure the outrage would be 100x and those sidebar rules would seem meaningless besides maybe 20% of the time.

I chose r/science because that's a topic that typically prides itself on caring about finding the truth, not about satisfying the ideological whims of the gatekeepers.

You call it petty dictatorship, I call it the best moderated subreddit of the whole platform.

You just happen to be lucky enough to be within the very narrow overton window. Or at least a) believe what's being curated for you and b) never cared to look at what's not being said.

You should hope that your views (or more accurately, their views) never stray from it and the information that a tiny group of people are controlling is good for the entire population.

You could say just use another subreddit. But this isn't limited to one.

Is the window really that narrow, or do you just happen to fall outside it/identify as having fallen outside of it for personal identity reasons?

It's narrower than you might think. For example, I've recently been paying attention to the trans issue because some are saying that pro-trans groups are equating words with violence [1] [2]. Apparently the pro-trans groups have been saying that only 1% detransition, but there are youth speaking out saying that number is likely far greater [3] [4] [5].

It's hard for me to believe these are made up stories. And, it appears that such stories are currently only being told via conservative media. Please correct me if I am wrong.

This is of interest to me because the US holds that words are not equal to violence, with the only exception being the emergency principle. According to Nadine Strossen, President of the ACLU from 1991-2008, the emergency test says speech may be punishable "if, in context, it directly causes specific imminent serious harm." [6] If groups are successfully convincing people otherwise, then it may mean we are forgetting what free speech is. Free speech, the US version anyway, draws the line at violence, not words.

[1] https://archive.ph/1NeiV#selection-1513.7-1513.57

[2] https://corinnacohn.substack.com/p/the-world-should-not-need...

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tQr6WZXHSQ

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdSKBVHrizo

[5] https://youtu.be/STE1pmCjULQ?t=2047

[6] https://books.google.com/books?&hl=en&id=whBQDwAAQBAJ&q=in+c...

That's a _VERY_ selective set of sources ([3][4][5]), which you are in bad faith using a representation of the "youth"

"There are youth speaking out" should not be taken to mean "all youth". It means "some youth".

It's another point of view on an issue that I'd only previously seen presented from one perspective. That's why I found it to be so interesting. I was shocked to hear it because I had no prior understanding that anything untoward was going on. Question for you, what do you think about Keira Bell's story?

Views are a currency, and not one I wish to give to GBnews.

I'm sure you can find her story elsewhere.

'Bad faith' is the modern authoritarian's favourite excuse for censorship or dismissing comments. Just like 'problematic' it's a vague enough term that it can be easily abused ('dog whistle' and 'gaslighting' are other favourites). You don't have to openly challenge the source material, just question the motives for even asking the question.

Perfect for when you don't have the balls to directly call what the person is saying wrong or bad. Ad hominem 101.

I hope the irony of your comment isn’t lost on you

It took a long time for you to get around to it, but was the reason your comments keep getting moderated because you show up in every gender / transgender thread dropping links and "just asking questions"?

More important than the content of speech in social media moderation is the behavior. You demonstrate bad behavior here.

> It took a long time for you to get around to it, but was the reason your comments keep getting moderated because you show up in every gender / transgender thread dropping links and "just asking questions"?

No, this is only the second time I've discussed the gender/trans issue. My comments generally get moderated for containing links to Reveddit.

> More important than the content of speech in social media moderation is the behavior. You demonstrate bad behavior here.

What is the bad behavior to which you are referring?

To be fair, tolerating transgender people's existence at all used to fall outside the Overton window. Having a small cabal of unimpeachable shadow lords ruling all discourse with an iron fist doesn't seem healthy for society to me.

Particularly when there's some circumstantial evidence that Ghislaine Maxwell used to be one of those mods: https://old.reddit.com/r/TopMindsOfReddit/comments/rrldd9/to... (skeptical link, but even here you can see that it's plausible)

I find it a little sad that in order to disagree with me you have to be mean about it.

There are plenty of reasons why a subreddit like r/science is fine for people, not just the fact that they have a "very narrow Overton window". Maybe it's because we understand that this particular subreddit does not conform to the usual agora of discussion that reddit is known for and just shows a list of maybe interesting science papers/articles and clarifications on them from people in the domain. I may disagree with some of the ideas put forward but I can be an adult about it and not jump to the conclusion that there's a cabal of "big science" that is trying to brainwash me.

> I find it a little sad that in order to disagree with me you have to be mean about it.

I didn't find what was written to be mean. Eleanor Roosevelt said,

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

If you feel sad, that's fine, I just want to point out that this is a choice we all make. Sometimes there is wide agreement on what constitutes offense, and we use this to justify the secret removal of other people's content. But offense is inherently subjective, and such secretive removals rob us of chances to sharpen our counter speech. Rather than trying to make perceived hateful conversations secretly disappear, I think we are better off allowing each other to prepare counter arguments to offensive speech.

Being mean? Jeez, I was hardly being mean. Being easily offended and being pro-censorship are two intersecting circles on the venn diagram.

Until the day you fail the purity test and have your IP and all accounts permabanned due to a disagreement with a mod in disguise.

Luckily, moderators can't IP ban anyone. :)

They just use the internal tools and create a ticket to have an admin ban your IP and all current and future accounts. Wow, such a hurdle!

Even more awesome to have this happen with a dormitory IP. /s

Yes, they can. If you piss off a moderator they'll just ask an admin to ban you, assuming it's not an admin's alt in the first place (admins have sockpuppet mod accounts on every major sub)

There's no purity test in the subreddit except being an acknowledged scientist in the domain the submission is about. Forgive me the snark, but it's like you don't even know what we're talking about.

Wait until your view becomes the one attacked. Regardless of scientific merit.

I think you and the other posters decrying my "oh so narrow" point of view forget that the subreddit is nothing more than a place to see interesting news about science and the clarifications that people in science can bring on those news.

What it is not is a place where laymen like me and (probably you) can debate the veracity of said science. I don't give a toss about which science articles are posted there and if they agree with my world view as long as the curation and moderation is consistent with the principles described in the subreddit's rules. In my opinion is fine to not have an opinion or comment even if someone on the internet is wrong - present time excluded. :P

Check out this talk from Jonathan Rauch [1]. He goes through how both the left and right censor, and how that ends up being good for nobody, even if it starts out happening only in the private sector.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0T9XSG73kY&t=1774s

I actually think the quality of the comment section in /r/science has gotten worse over the years because moderation is too slow or lenient. I assume that has more to do with the volume of work than intent of the moderation team themselves.

> Criticism of published work should assume basic competence

What this is saying is that even if egregious blunders are made it is against the rules to call that out - how can I point out incompetence if I have to assume competence?

I host a medical journal club - statistical incompetence in the life sciences is bountiful.

> Comments dismissing established findings

I’m sure defining established isn’t difficult to do/open for abuse. /s

Those aren’t “strict” rules - they are poorly defined rules open up to tremendous interpretation.

Reddit is a cesspool for honest intellectual debate.

It’s better to say I think the authors should have thought about X rather the author is a moron and incompetent for not doing X. You can still say it by critiquing the actions not the character of the person. Similar rules exist in the Houses of parliament around accusations of lying simply because everyone would decend into that as a method of argument. It’s harder to call people out but still possible in my opinion.

Ok, but that’s not what the rule is saying (be civil, no ad hominem, etc). If that were the case I would have no issue. Maybe that would be a reasonable rule - and it is on many forums.

It’s saying that criticism must “assume competence” - that’s very different - and as a moderator I can twist any kind of criticism into a violation of this rule. And why do I have to assume competence anyway - shouldn’t the work stand on its own merits?

And let’s get something straight - “being a moron” is not equivalent to being incompetent (in an area of expertise). One is just name calling the other is a specific legitimate criticism.

The community is 95% less competent than the researchers so I think this rule is fine.

The same can be said for any community discussing politics, technology, or entertainment. An overwhelming majority of online commenters are ignorant of those fields and the myriad of factors that have to be taken into account by the experts who are making the decisions that are being discussed. So, should comments in those subreddits "assume competence" of legislators, software businesses and TV producers, lest they be deleted?

If you are as competent as the researchers you’re perfectly capable of pointing out the mistakes made in the research without insults like competency or stupidity. As it says in the rules for hacker news:

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

That these rules are not enforced by deleting content but the comments largely disappearing from view (based on community voting) is not a hugely different outcome IMO. It’s also worth noting that you don’t have to participate in such a community if you don’t want to. Their space and their rules.

I absolutely agree with you that comments should not explicitly cast doubt on the authors competency, nor insult them or their reasonings. However, that is not the rule we are criticising. The rule is:

> Criticism of published work should assume basic competence

That rule for example would bar a commenter from critiquing the work for not taking into account a confounding factor, or for using a non-representative WEIRD [0] population sample to reach overly broad conclusions. Taking these issues into account can be argued to be "basic competence", but they are too often ignored in many the most headline-worthy social science papers that attract the most upvotes.

[0] western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnational_psychology#WEI...

That's why I go to the comments, for the 1% of commenter who do know better and can add something. That's why HN is still quite good, there are real experts here commenting on stuff below the line. Imagine if HN ruled that every article posted must be assumed correct - HN as a commentary would have no value for me any more.

The fact that the average community member is a moron doesn't mean that you should delete the posts from the people who are not. I'm sure they get tons of "biology doesn't replicate" posts that should get removed. They also remove posts that are polite, technically correct, and specific, and point out glaring issues in the paper.

I think that posses the credentials to show that are not "morons" can get verified in the subreddit and will not have their comments removed.

That is true, but this happens even to credentialed users who speak on papers outside of their supposed field of expertise, even when their comment is within their area of expertise. If a mathematician points out a math error in a biology or climate science paper, it gets deleted. The mathematician rightly should know more about math than a biologist or a climate scientist, and the comment is still taken down.

Also, you shouldn't need credentials to demonstrate that you know something - the fact that you post something polite and useful should be enough to have your comment not be removed. It is a useful proxy for moderation at scale, though.

> you shouldn't need credentials to demonstrate that you know something - the fact that you post something polite and useful should be enough to have your comment not be removed

The moderators of the subreddit obviously disagree. From the sides I would say it works for them.

It certainly works for the moderators - I agree. Whether it works for the community is another question.

>It’s better to say I think the authors should have thought about X rather the author is a moron and incompetent for not doing X.

It is probably less being a moron or incompetent than having an agenda would be the likely complaint ... depending on the subject matter that is. I suspect this is much more of a problem is social sciences than, say, pure mathematics.

It doesn't matter to the mods of r/science how politely you put it if you are suggesting that not considering X would have significantly changed the conclusions of "the science."

As an aside, most of the mods are toward the "soft" side of science (biology, medicine, social science), and likely do not understand statistics very well. Papers with glaring issues regularly make it to the top because their conclusions are cool, not because they are truly good/impactful works.

I once simply pointed out how an equation in a climate science paper didn't make sense because there was a unit error (there was exp(x) where x was not unitless) => removed.

Better than r/legaladvice where many of the moderators are law enforcement officers and aggressively remove good advice (including from actual attorneys) and aggressively push bad "cop law" that instructs people to take actions which are highly prejudicial to their own interests. :)

Ever once in a while I ponder how many people are unnecessarily stuck in jail because of that one subreddit then feel ill and have to stop thinking about it.

Is there an article that exposes this? How do you know?

The weird behavior there first came to my attention after hearing an attorney I know griping about their standard advice being removed in favor of "go turn yourself in" messages.

It's fairly well known at this point, I see multiple relevant threads on the first page of https://www.google.com/search?q=reddit+r%2Flegaladvice+moder...

This particular subreddit is not for actual debates. Everyone in this thread seems to forget about that.

It makes me think about comment sections here on HN when a study on psychedelics gets posted. Suddenly 90% of top comments are all personal anecdote about mushrooms or whatever.

That seems normal to me. I click and comment on the articles on topics that interest me. Aviation articles will have aviation buffs over-represented. Math articles math buffs. EV articles will have EV buffs and people with an opinion about Teslas over-represented.

For psychedelics, the effect might be more pronounced because there aren’t that many people casually interested and/or those who are are reading and not writing. (I’ve never taken any; what am I going to add to the discussion? If someone has and their comment is interesting, I’ll upvote it.)

Right, but it's all personal anecdote. Not commentary on studies or research. If the guidelines for the subreddit are to keep things more focused on research it would make sense to me for mods to remove the massive amount of anecdote that comes out of the woodwork.

Sure people can be interested in using psychedelics themselves, but they want the discussion to focus on research

This is what most people seem to miss in this HN thread. Go look at the average 'large' subreddit, and I'm talking about the ones where personal anecdotes are expected. You'll tend to have some top level posts that are decent, and generally longer post. You'll have hundreds of posts that are memes, crap like "5 out of 7, perfect", subarguments that go off topic, and plenty of bots posting comments from other threads. The format the /r/science requires is the antithesis of 99% of the rest of reddit.

This leads to moderation fatigue. You have lots of stuff that should be summarily executed and takes up tons of your time. Then you have the minority of posts that require some thought on if it's just a controversial post, or that guy that just keeps making accounts and being an intentional malicious troll. But, you don't have any time to think on these post because another 3 crap posts ended up in the moderation queue in the 3 seconds you're looking at the first one. Eventually people get to the point that if a post ends up in the moderation queue it just gets blocked, which then trolls use to flag just about everything. It's a messy situation when you're asking volunteers to do this.

Building a culture of moderation that promotes transparency and not using mod tools as your pet ideological argument winning device is not a lot to ask.

There seems to be zero ethical guidelines / pressure / consequences for any of this stuff.

Of course the problem is hard but I've seen tons of high quality, on-topic comments with 500+ upvotes get removed because the mods obviously disagreed with it. The commenter won't even know it's gone and 99% of visitors will not realize how thoroughly editorialized the entire conversation threads are.

I seriously recommend picking any even slightly controversial r/science post and look at the comments being removed. It's not just memes and trolling.

There are a lot of legitimate criticisms of papers that get removed, including comments that suggest sub-optimal experiment design, overreach in conclusions, or statistical issues (which are usually present in the hard-hitting, catchy studies that make it to r/science). Normally, these are part of healthy scientific discourse.

When the moderators of r/science particularly agree with a post or it is politically charged, almost any discussion of the actual science involved is purged (unless it is praise or an "explanation" that includes a lot of praise). When the mods don't agree, you can see some discussion of gaps in papers, but you must take the conclusion of the paper as 100% true, which is not how science works.