I've not run into that either and I've been on reddit since before digg v4

Banned. That's anti-vaxx propaganda on my part, evidently.

I messaged the mods to explain that I was triple-vaxxed and what I said was not only factually correct, it wasn't even controversial.

The mods patiently replied that anti-vaxx trolls like me will be reported to reddit to have my entire account banned "for harassment" if I contact them again.

What inward reflection do I need? This is just one of myriad examples with mods who don't actually read or process the content about which they're banning people.

Does it seem to you like this kind of person is reasonable here but unreasonable to the point of group toxicity elsewhere? Or that I'm unreasonable here?

Your initial comment here was unsupported by real world examples, and used a lot of rage-bait buzzwords.

When asked to put up a concrete example, no-one called you a fascist/nazi/transphobe in the example. They banned you for, according to you, "just asking questions" on a country specific coronavirus subreddit.

Your tone comes off as "I'm right, they're wrong. I'm the victim here!"

" saying at the time we didn't yet know how many doses and on what schedule of the vaccine would be needed."

"I messaged the mods to explain that I was triple-vaxxed "

So we can infer from this post that this happened sometime after Aug 2021. So someone went into the Canada Coronavirus group, a group where posts seem to get tens of comments, and brought up completely innocently, "how we don't know how many doses" we need. To make a broader point on what... could it have been, "how we shouldn't have a mandate?"

Perhaps this was closer to Feb/2022 where the Trucker protest was raging across Canada. Of course, the mods may not want a big flamewar over mandates in their group that seems like a niche information aggregation sub.

"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar", as it were.

I consider the playing of the accusation of the JAQ wildcard (an immediate victory in the minds of some subsets of observers) to be a much more dangerous (often literally unrealizeable) cultural norm, it is a go to staple technique in any delusional internet rhetorician's toolkit.

It is a well known tactic for ill intent. For a reason. People do it all the time and should be called out for doing so.

It's quite obvious when someone asks you questions with ill intent.

You believe the example was asked in bad faith? I heavily doubt it, it is a pure insinuation. I believe you are just walrussing here.

edit: Never mind, "walrussing" allegedly does exist. But I believe the criticism still can be understood.

Just because you can’t does not make it impossible.

> You believe the example was asked in bad faith?

When, exactly, did I claim that? Show me the exact quote because it doesn’t exist.

Making up things other said is a very obvious way to tell if someone is coming with bad intent.

Intuition yields belief, but beliefs and knowledge are not the same even though they are typically indistinguishable to the one who holds them.

This was the content of my comment, which got me banned from /r/CanadaCoronavirus.

I answered yes. As someone who has built communities online and in the real world, you are someone that, at best, needs careful management. I wouldn’t willingly include you in a team or community. I’ve done life or death stuff with the teams I built, I’m pretty good at this.

From reading through here plenty of other people think similarly. You are more willing to argue than you are to hear that your behavior is problematic. Even after asking specifically, and being told so.

You are exceptionally talented at this. You have literally dozens of people bickering. Congrats.

Unambiguously, I consider you toxic.

Someone who has a strong opinion and defends it?

Someone whose basis for their strong opinion you’ve deemed woefully insufficient?

Someone who doesn’t change their strong opinion when presented with a dozen comments against it and a similar number for it?

That the commenters are divided on my opinion isn’t toxic: it demonstrates it’s an issue with Reddit that’s affected at least half of us and left us annoyed, ashamed, or slighted.

If my behavior is problematic, then why is it only problematic on Reddit? On HN, when someone disagrees with me they don’t reach for any -ist words to describe me: they disagree with the comment on its own merits.

What does “problematic” even mean, other than that it’s bad and I should feel bad?

We are not building medical devices here. I’m not interviewing to be on your team in a work environment.

This is an example of the kind of topic that is interesting to discuss casually on HN with other hackers.

And the benefit of HN, unlike Reddit, is that disagreeing with someone doesn’t also turn them into a cartoon villain who must be vanquished. People here are allowed to be wrong without also being -ists or assholes.

Here’s what I was originally responding to.

> Does it seem to you like the kind of person you’re interacting with is reasonable here but unreasonable to the point of group toxicity elsewhere? Or that I'm unreasonable here?

This isn’t an ad hominem attack. He asked for a judgment on his personal behavior.

What exactly would they accomplish if not banned, and were allowed to continue to "ask questions"?

Why should anyone be afraid of them achieving that accomplishment?

"Do people have ideas, or do ideas have people?"

Carl Jung

Nope. That is it. Many, many subs would outright ban you if you dared to question the narrative or posted to a "misinformation" subreddit like /r/lockdownskepticism. It was pathetic, honestly. God forbid anybody disagree with what society chose to do with covid....

Some mods have a hair trigger on that ban hammer.

That’s kind of what I mean about inward reflection. If you find yourself on the receiving end of modding after stating entirely true and relevant facts… yes, maybe the mods are out of control. But maybe the impression you’re giving off while stating truth still leaves a sour taste. If you find yourself fielding accusations of being antivaxx and being racist and being a transphobe, etc etc, all in different subs with different mods then there’s only a few commonalities left. I’m not saying you did deserve any of this, I don’t have the evidence to, just that it’s something worth pondering.

My claim is the latter: it's a Reddit auto-immune disease that was hardly present in the early days and is now impossible to miss after years of gradual decline.

There are power-hungry mods, no doubt. They can be politically oriented in either direction, or sometimes just like to be the monarch. But I've been around reddit for over 15 years now, and in my view if you're regularly being accused of being toxic, I'm inclined to believe that you're the cause. And it may not be due to the factual nature of your posts, but the manner in which you share them.

Again, I don't know you, and my experience certainly can't generalize to everyone else. I was a mod for about six months, hated it, but that gave me all the insight I need into how dishonest (or possibly not at all self-aware) people can be when recounting how they were "wronged."

This is the very basis of why HN rules and moderation are structured the way they are: to actively discourage such an anticipated decline.

If a person seems reasonable and thoughtful on one anonymous forum, Occam's Razor suggests they are similarly thoughtful in another anonymous forum.

And I would argue any giant social network also inevitably declines into troll behavior and bad-faith brigading without active mitigation strategies. It is hard to balance these things.

I certainly think "I'm routinely regarded as an a-hole because I act like one" to be much more plausible than "I'm routinely regarded as an a-hole because this giant social network has a metaphorical auto-immune disease that results in me experiencing this routinely."

Especially when others participate in that same social network and don't experience that same problem.

The one benefit I could give this person is that they are seeking out subs that have a high likelihood of being ran by highly political moderators and are extrapolating that to the whole of reddit. The same could be true for what kinds of discussions they find themselves participating in. If they are attracted to highly political communities and controversial discussions, they would have a higher likelihood of running into such issues.

If interacting every day, it's getting harder not to be labeled an -ic or -ist of some kind in a sizable home town sub or a sub about a generic tv show.

That problem doesn't seem to exist on HN: more often people reply to the content of the comment without labeling the commenter.

My main problem with your conclusion is that this does not comport with my - and seemingly many others - experience, and my brief time as a mod has shown me that people who believe themselves to be victims often don't appreciate or admit their own culpability.

But I can't say that with any certainty, you're a whole human being with your own lived experiences, and I've no desire to review your reddit comment history either way. I do appreciate you are not the only one that feels as you do. I just can't square my experience with the one you claim impacts "every user" which is, quite frankly, preposterous and one of the main reasons I have a hard time taking your observations at face value.

But that's about all I have to say on the matter.

Don't forget the sub-perceptual cultural axioms of the era the Event occurred in within Time.

Perhaps you simply haven't encountered the kind of person who, at the vaguest sense of an opportunity to claim the title of Most Moral Person, will leap up to condescend you based on the most uncharitable and motivated reading of your words.

If it happens again and again, in different circles with different people, like GP indicates happens, then maybe, just maybe it's not everyone else that's the problem.

If this struck such a nerve with you, then you may want to take a step back and re-evaluate why you're so deeply triggered by people advocating for introspection instead of deflection.

It's pretty clear from your comment you won't, but that's a separate issue.

Projecting your obvious superiority complex onto others while at the same time accusing others of doing so is, quite frankly, hilarious.

Next time, just introspect instead of digging this idiotic hole further. It’s not really that hard to ask yourself “am I the asshole” and it’s quite obvious you’ve never done it in your life.

Either way, I’m done with whatever you want to call this obnoxious rambling of yours.

Reddit is not one person, you understand that right?

If multiple people on different parts of Reddit are telling you you’re an asshole— something I explicitly called out— then Occam’s Razor says that you are, in fact, the asshole.

The meme certainly applies, but not in the way you think it does.

If it’s only Reddit that finds many people’s behaviour objectionable Occam’s Razor would determine that Reddit is the problem.

Bullshit.

Reddit is made up of millions of people with different viewpoints. There are subreddits that are left leaning, centrist, right leaning, and everything in between. And many, many more which have no political viewpoint because they literally have nothing to do with politics.

To claim an entire user base has a “certain political viewpoint” is plainly ignoring the reality of the situation.

It certainly is a great strawman but it’s in no way shape or form representative of reality.

I’m going to ignore the rest of your comment because you clearly can’t conceptualize the basic idea that Reddit is not one mind. Come back to me when this most basic of concepts has sunk in and we can have an actual discussion rather than whatever this idiotic back and forth you’re insisting on is.

Cool. Stopped reading there.

I understand what you are doing: painting any assessment of Reddit to be a statement that Reddit has a single political opinion, which is a statement that nobody is making. And I am very very very glad you know what a strawman is.

Next time, don’t bother replying at all and save everyone the minute.

Did you also bother to read your own comments while you were at it? I would have assumed you did but you clearly have shown that comprehension is not in your wheelhouse.

> painting any assessment of Reddit to be a statement that Reddit has a single political opinion, which is a statement that nobody is making

I mean, that's literally what you did, but go off sis.

> I think we both know that Reddit has a certain political viewpoint, so let’s not pretend that we don’t.

Gotta love how you can't even keep your own argument straight, let alone comprehending a basic fact like "millions of people have their own thoughts and opinions on a site"

No.

Your quote does not support the assertion.

An average does not mean that individual data points can have different values.

I’m not a woman. My username is my own name. I’m not sure what you were trying here.

You should probably read the HN guidelines.

Almost word for word.

Is your cognitive dissonance that extreme? This gaslighting is idiotic when your own comments are right there to read.

Just stop. You’ve clearly proven you can’t even keep your own arguments straight, let alone properly respond to others’. There is no basis for discussion if you refuse to acknowledge the things you’ve clearly said.

Again, this doesn’t preclude there being a multitude of political affiliations on Reddit.

I’ve been very consistent on this and think you’ve done very poorly in response. It’s possible you’re so angry you’re not even reading what you’re quoting.

But ok.

> it’s Reddit that is out of touch.

> If it’s only Reddit that finds many people’s behaviour objectionable Occam’s Razor would determine that Reddit is the problem

Hell, even in this comment you continue to do it.

> Again, Reddit leans left of the general population.

Now suddenly Reddit is multiple people with multiple opinions?

> I’ve been very consistent on this

Consistent is the opposite of what you've been. But ok.

Do you actually believe the things you write? Like actually?

And only on Reddit.

In real life, and in other online communities (e.g. I’m a member of a “DINK” Facebook group for people without kids), I haven’t had this problem.

I haven’t gotten into flame wars with ad-hominems in recent memory either.

People are a lot less eager to play the “you’re vaguely problematic” card outside Reddit.

If I think AITA subs and similar communities really aren't very tolerant people at all. Sure, there are people that like to provoke, but I think some subs are just some form of merger of similar people believing themselves to be oh so generous in their judgmentality but in reality are pretty toxic by almost all standards.

> in different circles with different people, like GP indicates happens

But you just chose to ignore it and soldier on with your rambling diatribe.

If people in completely different subs like StarTrek and CanadaCoronavirus and god knows how many others all say someone is an asshole, then the person is just a fucking asshole. That’s all there is to it.

It’s not some big conspiracy caused by “merging of subs” or whatever other BS you and your friends come up with to justify your shitty behavior.

Considering this thread is no longer on the front page and you somehow chose to only reply to my comments and the sibling threads in here, I’m just going to go on a limb to say you’re probably a sock puppet for someone else here. Next time, just use your main account.

I mostly stick with smaller, non-default subs and don't really run into this problem anymore.

When you ask a reddit mod what is bias? It doesn't know. It was surrounded by it its whole life.