<story><title>Reddit is still in turmoil</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/21/reddit-is-still-in-turmoil/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>CM30</author><text>Twitter&amp;#x27;s problem isn&amp;#x27;t quite the same as Reddit&amp;#x27;s. It&amp;#x27;s because the site is incredibly inconsistent with its moderation.&lt;p&gt;If you run a community, you need consistency. Members need to know where the boundaries are in regards to how you can act and what is&amp;#x2F;isn&amp;#x27;t acceptable.&lt;p&gt;Twitter doesn&amp;#x27;t really do this well. If you agree with the staff political stances, you can basically get away with anything. If you&amp;#x27;re popular enough (or a large company), you can often get away with things that would get a less popular user banned.&lt;p&gt;For example, contrast what happens when a left wing user breaks the rules and attacks people and what happens when a right wing one does it. It seems like the former will get punished a lot less harshly for the same offence.&lt;p&gt;Twitter needs to stop this, and enforce the rules for everyone in every situation.</text></item><item><author>twblalock</author><text>I think much of Reddit&amp;#x27;s problems with its userbase boil down to an early failure to manage expectations.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s pretty clear that the Reddit corporation doesn&amp;#x27;t want Reddit to be an anything-goes, absolute free speech zone with no moderation or anti-harassment policies -- but that&amp;#x27;s what the site actually was for many years. Now, when the company cracks down, users think their freedoms are being curtailed. The mistake was ever allowing that kind of freedom in the first place, because people developed an expectation that it would persist.&lt;p&gt;Compounding that problem, the fact that the site was unregulated for so long caused it to attract the kind of people who need to be regulated the most. In other words, it&amp;#x27;s no surprise that the most tolerant communities attract people who are difficult to tolerate.&lt;p&gt;I suspect Twitter is having similar issues dealing with harassment, after letting it happen for so long. If there is a lesson in this, it is that online communities which plan to implement anti-harassment policies ought to do so from the beginning, and develop the expectation among the users that such policies exist, and will continue to exist. Don&amp;#x27;t just tack them on after several years, and don&amp;#x27;t enforce them inconsistently and arbitrarily as Reddit has done.&lt;p&gt;It will be difficult for Condé Nast to get its money&amp;#x27;s worth out of Reddit now. I doubt it will ever shake its negative reputation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>skj</author><text>If you ask us to compare between two examples, you are required to provide two actual examples instead of having us just imagine a scenario that fits your claim.</text></comment>
<story><title>Reddit is still in turmoil</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/21/reddit-is-still-in-turmoil/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>CM30</author><text>Twitter&amp;#x27;s problem isn&amp;#x27;t quite the same as Reddit&amp;#x27;s. It&amp;#x27;s because the site is incredibly inconsistent with its moderation.&lt;p&gt;If you run a community, you need consistency. Members need to know where the boundaries are in regards to how you can act and what is&amp;#x2F;isn&amp;#x27;t acceptable.&lt;p&gt;Twitter doesn&amp;#x27;t really do this well. If you agree with the staff political stances, you can basically get away with anything. If you&amp;#x27;re popular enough (or a large company), you can often get away with things that would get a less popular user banned.&lt;p&gt;For example, contrast what happens when a left wing user breaks the rules and attacks people and what happens when a right wing one does it. It seems like the former will get punished a lot less harshly for the same offence.&lt;p&gt;Twitter needs to stop this, and enforce the rules for everyone in every situation.</text></item><item><author>twblalock</author><text>I think much of Reddit&amp;#x27;s problems with its userbase boil down to an early failure to manage expectations.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s pretty clear that the Reddit corporation doesn&amp;#x27;t want Reddit to be an anything-goes, absolute free speech zone with no moderation or anti-harassment policies -- but that&amp;#x27;s what the site actually was for many years. Now, when the company cracks down, users think their freedoms are being curtailed. The mistake was ever allowing that kind of freedom in the first place, because people developed an expectation that it would persist.&lt;p&gt;Compounding that problem, the fact that the site was unregulated for so long caused it to attract the kind of people who need to be regulated the most. In other words, it&amp;#x27;s no surprise that the most tolerant communities attract people who are difficult to tolerate.&lt;p&gt;I suspect Twitter is having similar issues dealing with harassment, after letting it happen for so long. If there is a lesson in this, it is that online communities which plan to implement anti-harassment policies ought to do so from the beginning, and develop the expectation among the users that such policies exist, and will continue to exist. Don&amp;#x27;t just tack them on after several years, and don&amp;#x27;t enforce them inconsistently and arbitrarily as Reddit has done.&lt;p&gt;It will be difficult for Condé Nast to get its money&amp;#x27;s worth out of Reddit now. I doubt it will ever shake its negative reputation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>makomk</author><text>Twitter&amp;#x27;s other problem is that they cannot be consistent in their moderation, because when they ban someone threatening violence against celebrities in the name of, say, feminism the campaign to reinstate them comes from people in the tech industry and press that they can&amp;#x27;t ignore.</text></comment>