And then there are subreddit coups where someone ousts the old mods and starts banning people according to a whole new set of opinions . . .

Rather (in)famously, /r/xkcd, which was overtaken (for a time) by militant Muslim anti-semite neo-nazi holocaust deniers.

The subreddit was eventually reclaimed, but it took some months. There's an account of the hostile takeover and clawback here: <https://old.reddit.com/r/self/comments/1xdwba/the_history_of...> (2014).

I read the discussion. What does unrelated views not expressed on your subreddit matter. Why the need to get rid of a mod who at worst has a sidebar to other subreddits they control. If the mod is black, white, Asian, wears fur coats or believes in a flat earth; none of that should matter unless it's affecting your subreddit. Let people be themselves you would be surprised by many of your co-worker real life.

Put mildly, the moderation was affecting not only the subreddit, but the referenced site (xkcd) itself. And then some.

There is a reason that commercial and noncommercial organisations are so absolutely obsessed with brand management, identity, and reputation, much as I generally find that to be a somewhat absurd concern. Moderators have an absolutely vast impact on how a discussion proceeds, and ultimately on impressions going far beyond just that discussion, including the rest of Reddit (or whatever platform is involved); commercial, social, and political impacts; and the idea of a general online communications themselves.

HN would be a very different place if, say, /u/soccer were mod rather than dang, and I suspect much of its present status and value would be lost in very short order.

We've had plenty of experience, over many decades and much scale, of poorly-functioning moderation, and in general it ends quite poorly. As I've noted many times, one of the most surprising things about HN is that it's retained its status and value as a forum for as long as it has. Far longer than the original and revered Usenet (of which I was a small participant, pre-eternal-September), or Slashdot, Friendster, Digg, or even Reddit (itself a YC launch, slightly pre-dating HN, but unlike HN retaining far less of its original spirit and quality).

We need P2P social media where bigoted, power hungry mods can't enforce their unilateral views on everyone else.

Plenty of such things exist, and I (and everyone I know) generally avoid visiting them. There is simply too much spam, trolling, hate speech, wrong information, ads, off-topic conversations..

Turns out moderation is actually useful if you want to have interesting conversations.

We get what we've paid for. I wouldn't want the thankless work for free job.

We tried that but they filled up with spammers and morons. Other people who are neither don't want to use those systems. It's the Nazi bar effect, but for spam.

Somewhere between there, and "recite these falsehoods someone paid us to make you recite or get banned", there may or may not be a point that's actually okay.

We had it. It's still out there. NNTP (and ignore cancel messages if you dare).

Reddit is awful now. Some sub reddits are so anal about following new post guide lines every question I ask is automatically removed. And I've tried really hard to follow the rules. I have given up asking. Also who thought it was a good idea to put a wall of rules text at the top of every thread. It is a pain to scroll past and I'm pretty certain no one except crazy people read them.

I think i post in like 2 smaller subreddits now because its impossible to participate in anything. automod and eventually real mods are always deleting stuff because of some seemingly random interpretation of a rule

You have been banned from /r/NorthKorea ...

(One of the more ostentatious examples, but hardly the only one.)

That was /r/pyongyang and it was a running joke. No one actually expects there to be a subreddit about North Korea.

However, running jokes have a tendency to morph into real movements - like flat earth theory and, arguably, Donald Trump.

Reddit is mostly garbage. TFA says "...they are CRUSHING it. Probably because people are gravitating toward authentic content and a sense of community" but if you find authenticity and community there (or really online anywhere) you need to get out of the house more.

The company itself will ban you for similar reasons. The views could be a faith with a billion people. Still hate speech or harassment for peacefully sharing it. Whereas, mockery of that group was allowed in the same spaces.

Given the state of the world, I'm not sure if that will help or hurt their marketing. Probably help with enough like-minded people. Same for social nets with opposing views.

I'm not sure what effect AI will have on places like Reddit due to the community factors. It will be interesting to watch.

If you even comment on certain subreddits you'll get banned from swathes of the site.

The model of independent subreddits only works if they are really independent. But in practice, all the big subreddits are run by the same people, heavily overlapping groups, who are in constant communication and coordination with each other via discord (previously IRC).

I get that for subreddit bans, but I've never had a sitewide ban.

Certain subreddit moderators are well-connected with the sitewide administrators. Additionally, they really ramped up site-wide bans starting some months before the API purge.