Jun 14, 2016 01:34 AM
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/orlando...e-internet
EXCERPT: If you browsed Reddit Sunday, you would have noticed that the top news on one of the United States’s largest websites wasn’t the mass shooting that left at least 50 people dead in a gay nightclub in Orlando. Instead, the community’s attention was focused on how moderators of the site’s /r/news subreddit handled the event. Once again, discussion and information dissemination was drowned out by Reddit’s internal drama.
As you might expect, there’s a lot of history and layers to all of this, so I’ll just give you the topline notes: In the hours after the Orlando mass shooting was reported, moderators at /r/news banned comments in the most popular thread about the shooting, then removed many additional links to other news reports about the story. The moderating team eventually created a “mega thread” to discuss the shooting, but deleted thousands of comments in it and banned many of the users who posted in it.
Screenshots show that people were banned or muted from the subreddit for posting links with new information and some people were also banned for posting information about where people could donate blood to the victims. One of the /r/news mods responded to one commenter with “kill yourself,” for good measure.
A site that archives deleted comments shows that many on-topic comments were removed without explanation. Eventually, a moderator of /r/news made a post addressing, if not apologizing, for the whole thing.
[...] Unless you’re an ardent believer in the Reddit community or particularly enjoy internet drama, the specifics of what happened don’t really matter. What matters is that if you wanted the news, Reddit was not the place for you to get it.
This pattern is increasingly predictable: A major news event occurs; people rush to post about it; the moderators are overwhelmed and react poorly; the community freaks out and, suddenly, the drama and reaction to the news has become the story....
EXCERPT: If you browsed Reddit Sunday, you would have noticed that the top news on one of the United States’s largest websites wasn’t the mass shooting that left at least 50 people dead in a gay nightclub in Orlando. Instead, the community’s attention was focused on how moderators of the site’s /r/news subreddit handled the event. Once again, discussion and information dissemination was drowned out by Reddit’s internal drama.
As you might expect, there’s a lot of history and layers to all of this, so I’ll just give you the topline notes: In the hours after the Orlando mass shooting was reported, moderators at /r/news banned comments in the most popular thread about the shooting, then removed many additional links to other news reports about the story. The moderating team eventually created a “mega thread” to discuss the shooting, but deleted thousands of comments in it and banned many of the users who posted in it.
Screenshots show that people were banned or muted from the subreddit for posting links with new information and some people were also banned for posting information about where people could donate blood to the victims. One of the /r/news mods responded to one commenter with “kill yourself,” for good measure.
A site that archives deleted comments shows that many on-topic comments were removed without explanation. Eventually, a moderator of /r/news made a post addressing, if not apologizing, for the whole thing.
[...] Unless you’re an ardent believer in the Reddit community or particularly enjoy internet drama, the specifics of what happened don’t really matter. What matters is that if you wanted the news, Reddit was not the place for you to get it.
This pattern is increasingly predictable: A major news event occurs; people rush to post about it; the moderators are overwhelmed and react poorly; the community freaks out and, suddenly, the drama and reaction to the news has become the story....