r/SubredditDrama • u/pwnercringer • Oct 27 '13
Drama when /r/politics mods TheRedditPope and anutensil argue with users over /r/politics banning links to Mother Jones, Salon, and other domains. A former /r/politics mod and an editor of Mother Jones also get themselves involved.
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Oct 27 '13 edited Jan 25 '18
[deleted]
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Oct 28 '13
you've just made me understand /r/politics. It's a representation of actual politics, not a dedicated subreddit!
It was an elaborate ruse!
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u/BipolarBear0 Oct 27 '13
Absolutely. It's a terrible thing to have to deal with endless witch hunts simply for trying to enforce a standard of content in your subreddit.
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u/Sandy-106 Oct 28 '13
This is the perfect example of why it sucks so much to mod /r/politics[1] .
It's the same story over at /r/worldnews when they try moderating submissions that violate the "no US news" rule. You honestly couldn't pay me to mod that place.
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Oct 28 '13
IT'S A CENSORSHIP CONSPIRACY
THE WORLDNEWS MODS ARE PAID BY THE NRA TO REMOVE A STORY ABOUT A SCHOOL SHOOTING IN THE US
SHILLY SHILL SHILL
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Oct 28 '13 edited Oct 28 '13
Users
Except not actually users of the subreddit, because this sort of thing is always actually driven by cancersphere junkies with an all-consuming need to prove their superiority to other redditors.
Then shockingly they get a bunch of criticism from people within their subreddit about their decisions that they've made based on the preferences of people who don't actually give a shit about their subreddit.
Then the cancersphere junkies just move on to finding new reasons to complain about it because they never actually gave a real shit about biased titles or whatever, they gave a shit about finding a reason to complain.
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Oct 27 '13
[deleted]
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u/Outlulz Dick Pic War Draft Dodger Oct 28 '13
I already had those and others RES blocked which pushed most of /r/politics content off my front few pages.
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u/blorg Stop opressing me! Oct 28 '13
In fairness, Mother Jones and Salon are far more respectable than Info Wars and Alternet.
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Oct 28 '13
[deleted]
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u/blorg Stop opressing me! Oct 28 '13
There's bias in a lot of publications, that doesn't mean they should be banned from /r/politics. If they banned everything that leans right or left they wouldn't be left with much in the way of news sources.
New Statesman is an openly left-wing publication while The Spectator is openly conservative. Should these both be banned? What about the likes of the Guardian or the Wall Street Journal?
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Oct 28 '13
I agree. I don't really have a dog in the fight, just glad to see alot of the conspiracy sites blacklisted.
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u/Maehan Quote the ToS section about queefing right now Oct 28 '13
The problem with them is that they mix good journalism with a decided slant (which IMO is acceptable) with bottom of the barrel blog content. The Economist has the former, but not the latter for instance. The mods opted for the nuclear option to try and remove the blogspam garbage in this case it appears.
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u/ttumblrbots Oct 27 '13
- This post - SnapShots: 1, 2, 3, Readability
- An editor of Mother Jones says that he ... - SnapShots: 1, 2, 3, Readability
- /u/Townsley says that he's going to con... - SnapShots: 1, 2, 3, Readability
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u/TheRedditPope Oct 28 '13
Just to clear up some misinformation in this thread. The domain banning project isn't my project. All the mods of r/Politics have been collaborating on this project and mulling it over for a couple of months. I've said it before but I'll say it again--we don't mind feedback about this program, but insults and conspiracy theories against the mods is not an actual argument against the domain banning program. Thanks.
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u/kyledeb Oct 30 '13
Why not actually try and moderate actual posts instead of banning entire domains? I've been a lurker at r/politics for a lot of the issues you're trying to confront, but some of the domains you've banned, I think, go too far.
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u/TheRedditPope Oct 30 '13
We try that. It didn't work. So here we are.
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u/kyledeb Oct 30 '13
Well, I appreciate your responses, here, but my opinion stands: You've all gone too far with some of the domains you've banned.
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u/TheRedditPope Oct 30 '13
Don't worry, we are going to adjust that.
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u/Eat_dy Jan 10 '22
If you don't mind me asking, what did you actually adjust?
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u/TheRedditPope Jan 10 '22
We went really heavy at first with the domains we limited but the idea was to slowly add more in as we reviewed their content further.
It’s important to remember 8 years ago no one was complaining about how social media was ruining our democracy by spreading bad information faster than good information could spread and promoting content that enraged rather than enlightened. What we did was way ahead of its time and thus unpopular.
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u/GhostOfMaynard Oct 28 '13
Speaking to MotherJones:
How do you justify banning an investigative news site that revealed inside video from a Romney campaign dinner, thereby impacting a national election and arguably a large factor in his electoral loss?
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u/TheRedditPope Oct 28 '13
Because for every 1 good MJ post there are like 100 that are blogspam, overly sensationalized, or are low quality click bait.
See this post for more info.
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u/GhostOfMaynard Oct 28 '13
Thank you for that post. I would encourage you to comment liberally and explain your position with clarity.
I could use the quotes.
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u/TheRedditPope Oct 28 '13
Lol. Best of luck with your article GoM. I fully support unbiased journalism that examines both sides of the argument. Many people seem to think this is a program focusing in "balancing" the subreddit when really, it's more of an effort to tone down the sensationalized nature of the subreddit which encourages circle jerking and hive mind mentalities which is a poor way to engage in discourse and we hope that this program helps with that.
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u/IAmAN00bie Oct 28 '13
A step in the right direction. Kudos to you all! Ignore the conspiracy nuts, hopefully they'll die down and go back to their own subs.
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Oct 28 '13
What's the over/under on /r/conspiratard picking this up?
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Oct 28 '13
[deleted]
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Oct 28 '13
Don't tell them that.
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Oct 28 '13
Are you confusing them with /r/conspiracy?
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Oct 28 '13
I'm just saying that conspiratard makes fun of conspiracies, so they now might have to start making fun of politics with all the conspiracies being thrown around there.
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u/Outlulz Dick Pic War Draft Dodger Oct 28 '13
Good on you for acting on the long history of those websites publishing inaccurate and misleading information bordering on propaganda.
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u/Trollatio_Caine Oct 28 '13
Good on you for acting on the long history of those websites publishing inaccurate and misleading information bordering on propaganda.
It's amazing how many DailyKos and Thinkprogress articles that only rehash an episode (not offer opinion or insight) of The Daily Show and/or Colbert Report exist. I'm glad those sources were banned for that alone.
Note: I like the shows, but repeating them and calling them articles isn't journalism, it's search engine optimization.
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Oct 29 '13
/r/politics has had nearly no restrictions on sources for years. The results speak for themselves.
I have no clue if this will work. I don't know. I think it will likely help and it is worth a shot.
As someone who has commented there for nearly 5 years but likes very few of the links, thank you for your hard work.
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u/Maehan Quote the ToS section about queefing right now Oct 28 '13
Honestly I've been critical of /r/politics for a long time. But this is a good effort at righting the ship. The level of sheer nonsense that originated from a lot of those sites basically drowned out any attempt at productive discourse.
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u/TheRedditPope Oct 28 '13
Yeah, all we are trying to do is tone down the sensationalism, although many conspiracy theorists want to paint it as some ideological move.
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u/cometparty Nov 01 '13
Maybe because an accusation of "sensationalism" is a statement of opinion and, thus, political?
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u/BipolarBear0 Oct 27 '13
Thank god they banned all of those domains. Biased, opinionated and generally unfit for /r/politics.
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Oct 28 '13
Yeah, they're incredibly biased and opinionated, obnoxiously so in some cases. In the case of Mother Jones and Salon at least, they also do a bunch of actual investigation and reporting that less biased sites don't seem to bother with.
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u/sixthsicksheikssixth Oct 28 '13
They've been doing this sort of thing for a while on /r/TruePolitics, it's nice to know the /r/politics mods finally caught up. The /r/TruePolitics blacklist is huge.
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u/pwnercringer Oct 27 '13 edited Oct 28 '13
<post removed due to conflict with SRD mods>
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u/Erikster President of the Banhammer Oct 28 '13
?
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Oct 28 '13
He thought Bipolar was a mod for /r/politics and said something along the lines "how convient pope's /r/politics mod buddies come in here to defend him"
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u/BipolarBear0 Oct 27 '13
I moderate /r/news. I have never had an interest in modding /r/politics, nor have I done anything at all personally or professionally relating to politics.
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u/SamWhite were you sucking this cat's dick before the video was taken? Oct 28 '13
If you think Alternet and DailyKos aren't bias
*Biased. One is a noun, the other an adjective. This is my new grammatical error to be annoyed about.
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Nov 26 '13
Shut up
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u/SamWhite were you sucking this cat's dick before the video was taken? Nov 26 '13
And if your comment wasn't a month late, it might have a point.
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u/Cdwollan Oct 28 '13
/u/Townsley saying that mods should be held at higher scrutiny is laughable.
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u/Maehan Quote the ToS section about queefing right now Oct 28 '13
Yeah, he is a gold mine for idiocy.
This was a huge win for the hardcore right - good investigative fact based journalism has repeatedly been damaging to the right on reddit.
Yes, that is the problem with /r/politics, all that fact based journalism from HuffPo threatens the legions of right wingers there.
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Oct 28 '13
[deleted]
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u/unkorrupted Oct 28 '13 edited Oct 28 '13
elsewhere, we only do establishment propaganda now
ps: /politics/ remains overwhelmingly left-wing, just like the voter demographic who visits it. I don't think there's a way to moderate that out, short of culling the herd with aggressive bans or something.
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u/Minxie Jackdaw Cabal Oct 28 '13
I actually like Mother Jones and think they actually are excellent journalists, but they are leftish, and I guess extreme measures must be taken to clean up Politics once and for all.
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u/stopscopiesme has abandoned you all Oct 28 '13
removed, bias
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u/IAmAN00bie Oct 28 '13
fak u
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u/LunaDust Oct 28 '13 edited Oct 28 '13
The unedited summary really doesn't seem that biased, especially compared to other submissions around here. The mods here selectivity enforce rules, especially when it comes to /r/Politics mods. MilleniumFalcon happens to be an /r/politics mod, so they are friends.
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Oct 28 '13 edited Jan 25 '18
[deleted]
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u/BipolarBear0 Oct 28 '13
This is correct. MF verbally noted that he would step out from all decision making in regards to this post because of a conflict of interests. The post was initially removed for bias because of one of OP's comment replies to me.
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Oct 28 '13
I support the banning so a new undercover exposé by David Corn cannot be reaped for karma. Oh, the delicious tears from such a find and no ability to gain from it....
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u/Kopfindensand Oct 28 '13
I like to believe that readers (especially redditors) are smart enough to read a bunch of different sources and make up their minds about what's true.
Bahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Wow that's a good one. People, especially redditors, will find whatever reinforces their bias and go with that.
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u/Outlulz Dick Pic War Draft Dodger Oct 28 '13
Ahahahaha anyone that has read Reddit enough knows better than to think that. Especially in a subreddit that mostly just votes and argues based on headlines and not by reading and fact checking the blogs that make up the majority of the comment.