[HN Gopher] 'Coup Attempt' of Reddit's Wallstreetbets Forum Is A...
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'Coup Attempt' of Reddit's Wallstreetbets Forum Is Averted
Author : drewrem11
Score : 56 points
Date : 2021-02-05 16:55 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.pcmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.pcmag.com)
| jsonGobbler wrote:
| as a user and member of WSB I have been trying to think how one
| could create a platform that is meant to deal with bots. I think
| this is going to be a crucial thing in the coming years.
|
| Bad actors are able to easily influence the sentiment of a
| community with these bots. I even thought after all this is over
| WSB is dead, it doesn't cost much for these firms to continue to
| leave their bots on posting and changing the sentiment of the
| community and ultimately forcing members to leave.
|
| Does anyone have any ideas on how this could be done?
| revnode wrote:
| > Does anyone have any ideas on how this could be done?
|
| You can get rid of the automated variety pretty easily. What
| you can't do is stop people from paying others to post specific
| content. At that point, it's a human and they can pass any
| automated bot test you come up with.
| [deleted]
| kazinator wrote:
| The unconnected dots here are why some group of old moderators
| have to ban newer moderators in order to garner some sort of
| lucrative movie deal just for themselves?
| chc wrote:
| It seems like the narrative is that the older moderators were
| uninvolved with any of the recent events, so in order to boost
| their likelihood of being treated as experts by default, they
| decided they'd try to reduce the visibility of the moderators
| who would otherwise get the attention.
| leetcrew wrote:
| > "They (the old mods) left for years and came back when they
| smelled money," wrote "zjz," a banned moderator.
|
| sort of ironic given the purpose of the sub.
| gabereiser wrote:
| I was going to say the same thing. Long holds work exactly like
| this... Don't look at it for a long time to restrict your
| temptation to day trade and potentially make a wrong move at
| the wrong time.
|
| Every successful investor I know does this. They put in it,
| don't look at it for months, if not years, and do a eval-
| reshuffle of their portfolio every 5-10 years.
|
| The more media /r/wallstreetbets gets, the more I'm convinced
| it's going to implode from within due to money and power.
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| Well that's one strategy, nothing wrong with it but there are
| a lot of other ways to generate money from the stock market.
| emteycz wrote:
| Its very different. Speculating on a market vs taking over a
| sub after being inactive for years to get into the spotlight
| when it's in the news is not comparable at all.
| leetcrew wrote:
| agreed, I think in this case reddit made the correct (or
| "least bad") decision. I just find it amusing that users of
| a subreddit dedicated to getting rich quick by making wild
| bets would complain about a mod cashing in on their
| position. it's sort of like a graffiti artist complaining
| about someone defacing their work.
| lupire wrote:
| WSB (read the name) is for gambling, not exploiting or
| defacing anything, so there's no reason members would
| condone trashing their home for money.
| jayrot wrote:
| > it's sort of like a graffiti artist complaining about
| someone defacing their work.
|
| "bomb condos not murals"
| [deleted]
| AndrewBissell wrote:
| Just calling any old thing a "coup" now I guess.
| reedf1 wrote:
| I find comments like this needlessly pedantic, unsubstantive,
| and, in this case, probably wrong.
| yomega wrote:
| I find comments like his to be humorous, and comments like
| yours to be falsely sanctimonious.
| reedf1 wrote:
| If my comment is sanctimonious what does that make yours?
| dokem wrote:
| "I know you are but what am I?"
| slowhand09 wrote:
| Insurrection!!!
| Qwertious wrote:
| What word would you prefer to use to describe an adversarial
| attempted takeover of the subreddit's governance?
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| In spite of actual real world coups occurring[0], the bar for
| what constitutes a "coup" in 2021 has dropped to questionable
| levels.
|
| [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55882489
| emteycz wrote:
| It's a metaphor. How would you call it with one word to get
| the message through?
| wtfiswiththis wrote:
| I feel like you are not talking about this article anymore.
| You should be direct, your writing would come off as more
| sincere.
|
| Do you believe Republicans/Trump attempted a coup?
| echelon wrote:
| Sounds like a bad idea to grow a community on Reddit if the site
| can remove you and put others in your place. Why put any effort
| into the task at all, if Reddit reaps all the benefit?
|
| I'm not saying what these mods did is or is not scummy. Rather,
| I'm looking at Reddit and the way they perceive the communities
| that live on their platform.
| VectorLock wrote:
| People need to remember that you don't own a subreddit, reddit
| owns your subreddit, they're just letting you moderate it for
| them.
| wavefunction wrote:
| From what little I know the person responsible for growing the
| WSB community was the banned admin 'zjz' who was quoted.
| newacct583 wrote:
| Subreddits are discussion forums, they aren't business
| ventures. Obviously the very big ones run into some gray area,
| but the overwhelmingly common situation is that moderators "put
| effort into the task" of creating a subreddit so they can
| simply have a nice place to discuss things and not "to reap
| benefit".
|
| Trying to monetize a subreddit isn't really the purpose of the
| site, and if you want to do that there are other tools
| available.
| supercanuck wrote:
| Seems no different than Bogleheads shilling index funds in
| the 00's
| Jonnax wrote:
| Yes. That's the business model of Reddit.
|
| They host the website and have the user base.
|
| And moderators create subreddits which they control.
|
| The web comic xkcd's subreddit had a holocaust denier as the
| top mod. In 2014.
|
| Reddit didn't step in even though the comic's creator didn't
| like it. And other mods and the community asked for it.
|
| They were only removed once they were inactive for two months.
|
| Summary I found: https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/reddit-xkcd-
| moderator-socce...
| neuronic wrote:
| Reddit "steps" if and only if there is a marketing
| disadvantge or possibilties of judicial actions.
|
| Reddit never had any problems hosting white supremacists,
| pedophiles, psychopaths and criminals as long as news
| networks or authorities didn't get involved.
|
| User count is more important than morality, ethics, humanity
| or moderation. Reddit also tends to casually lie about this.
| The creepy smiling Smoo says it all.
| [deleted]
| notional wrote:
| One of the interesting takeaways from this is that if you get
| lucky to be a mod of a sub that blows up in popularity it can be
| come a lucrative business.
|
| I know there's been many articles written about this kind of
| thing, but I'm surprised it hasn't (or maybe it has) become a
| trend to build a popular subreddit for the purpose of selling out
| once it has traction.
|
| Some subreddits will be more profitable than others. Gaming subs
| or anything with commerce attached to it are obvious wins.
| Politics too are an obvious target for taking in money for
| approved content.
|
| I wonder if there has been much speculation or analysis into
| which existing communities are poised for takeover/competition
| with the goal of 'selling out' for promoted content later.
|
| I think if the problem became too common it would force Reddit to
| reevaluate the community mod aspect of the site but who knows.
|
| quick edit: after I wrote this and thought about it I realized
| this is also kinda how reddit started in the early days with them
| faking users and comments in order to grow in popularity and gain
| traction as a forum. In a way it's sticking with the early ethos
| of Reddit's founding team.
| wjmao88 wrote:
| Interestingly, Baidu had been selling moderator rights for
| boards on its Tieba (which is kind of the same as subreddits on
| reddit). It got lots of backlash especially after they sold mod
| rights for some cancer patient support group boards to, well,
| alternative medicine promoters.
| lupire wrote:
| Most of the popular subs are run by a small group of people who
| use mod power to sell native advertising and reputation
| manipulation (suppressing anti-advertiser commentary, promoting
| pro-advertisiter sentiment).
| neaden wrote:
| This is also the strategy of a lot of social media accounts
| that compile cute animal pictures or something, amass followers
| then sell the account for ads.
| [deleted]
| dooglius wrote:
| Isn't what the article calls an aversion more of a coup than the
| initial banning of the newer mods?
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(page generated 2021-02-05 23:03 UTC)