Reddit censoring all steemit links
Source: breitbart.com
So today I tried to post a link to @royaltiffany's "How Bitcoin is changing payment processing" panel @ AWSummit on /r/btc. The post showed for me but not for her and I couldn't find it when I tried in a private window. So I made a post or /r/btc about it being removed. The removal didn't show up in the open moderation logs either. I was able to find that it had be removed by checking on ceddit. It just showed removed by moderator:
I received the following answer as to why from @bitcoinxio:
It’s because it’s Steemit. Reddit blocked them a long time ago. We have in our automod scripts though to auto-approve Steemit posts. So the fact that Reddit still blocked it and ignored our automod script is concerning. I’ve seen this happen recently for some other links, including posts in /r/bitcoincash.
So not only is reddit shadow banning all posts from steemit but they are now overriding subredit overrides of the site wide rule. This means if you post a link to something on steemit it won't be seen unless a mod manually approves your post. Even if a mod does that you post won't likely be seen. It takes time to find an approve them. By that time they would have fallen out of view since they received no upvotes.
I'm now wondering what other sites are on the reddit shadowban list. I would guess if they aren't already cryptocurrency based sites like yours.org, memo.cash, dlive.com, busy.org etc will all be censored.
Just tested on an inactive subreddit I moderated. Steemit.com link I posted was automatically removed and required me to approve it as a moderator.
Fuck Reddit.
On the plus side, busy.org links are not censored for now.
This is some serious big brother 💩. Reddit is running scared apparently. Busy.org links will have to do!
Maybe they are scared. Maybe there was just too many people spam posting? I certainly have seen that, as people are spam posting link-posts to their external websites/profiles whatever.
Probably that is the reason plus they don't want to see other similar sites getting the traffic!
Interesting they don't censor Busy links. Puts a new spin on the idea of uncensorable blockchain based social media. The more frontends, the harder it will be for them to censor.
They just haven't realized it yet. I'm sure the 2 seconds it takes to add a url to the list isn't the issue here. They could add all the known steem sites in a minute. I think the only question is how long until they realize and go looking.
Well now we'll only post with busy decentralization works guys :D
Ok, so they're blocking steemit but not worried enough to actually look and do some research on steem(it). We still have time then to build more.
This is great news btw :)
When the old guard start taking notice of the new, small scale (and we are still small scale) efforts to improve and replace what they see as their core, it means we're doing some things right.
Just wait til they look in to us properly and start to block everything that plugs in to the blockchain. Then we will know we're in business.
This is mostly the Fault of @comedypenmic, since they started they been telling Reddit and Steemians alike that they will be ransacking SubReddit Funny members to #ComedyOpenMic on Steem.
Apparently they have been scheming to steal 1% of their members from the largest subreddit s/Funny in just their first 12months! BTW 1% of 50Million = 500,000 new Steemians :D
Click To Vote @ComedyOpenMic For Witness And Disrupt The Steem Blockchain With Laughter!
Thank you to @matytan for the great banner
If you Are Not Afraid of The Dark, come say Hello in COM Discord: https://discord.gg/uy8KTds
BTW. @ned, you don't need hair gel for this situation, it's a good sign, @sneak propose a Steem-bounty for first Reddit-quest SMT, and @andrarchy make sure you sell this in SF3 about Reddit FOMO..... heheh!
FYI, @ComedyOpenMic has a subreddit with Steemit links that appears to be functioning correctly. On a personal note, I got booted from r/funny. Not for being unfunny, but for posting my own humorous stories. The shame
FCUK YEAH! Steem & COM FTW!
Shreddit the social media site that turned digital back into paper and still realized it was crap... shreddit.
well said @koh
The thing about Reddit people don't realise is that it was created by the Nazis. Reddit was one of Hitlers many failed experiments to try and improve the human race, instead what happened is they ended up creating a site with the worse people possible and created a virus that spread through the Internet like a plague.
The only way for people to cure themselves is to quit Reddit and join Steem. We are the antidote. Wake up Reddit sheeple, you're part of an actual Nazi experiment.
This conspiracy seems quite legit, I'm pushed to believe it
If you wrote “to try and improve the humor race” this comment would have been perfect.
Shreddit the Reddit! Btw - sharing is caring!
I never tried Reddit. Does it come with a side of fries?
Actually Reddit was originally created by the Feds and was called Fed IT until a group of terrorists took over and changed the name to Reddit.
Man, Reddit's gone down hill since it came under new leadership:
src
Don't believe me? Ask your wife if you're allowed out to the pub with friendsYou know she rides him more than this horse
Is that the doctor? Please, I have a big problem. Staring at Reddit in the day deflates my dicken at night. Help!
Very occasionally, I go to reddit to meet weird people...plenty of weird people at @comedyopenmic. New source, I’m all set now... ;)
Sounds to me like Reddit doesn't want to advertise its most threatening competitor, i.e. Steem. I wonder if using a link shortener would circumvent the issue? Or as @demotruk mentions, an alternative explorer such as busy.org (@busy.org, which I prefer anyways).
The censorship on Reddit is out of control. Two Steem posts that further document the problem are:
Regarding the quote by @bitcoinxio:
It's interesting to learn about the two layers of censorship on Reddit, once from the subreddit automod and a second time from Reddit Inc. Note that I use the word censorship rather than spam prevention because the policies are so indiscriminate they have an incredible rate of false positives (assuming the aim is to remove spam and nothing else).
``Sounds to me like Reddit doesn't want to advertise its most threatening competitor, i.e. Steem.''
Exactly my thoughts when I heard about this just now. This type of behavior will get worse.
``It's interesting to learn about the two layers of censorship on Reddit, once from the subreddit automod and a second time from Reddit Inc. Note that I use the word censorship rather than spam prevention because the policies are so indiscriminate they have an incredible rate of false positives.''
We need to create Reddit on Steem. And didn't somebody here make a very similar looking front end with similar to Reddit features?
Censorship will be on the rise; why would they make it easy for their competitors? (And everybody in this space are basically competitors. For the budget of user time.)
Then give them the busy.org-link of the same post or any of the other other alternatives!
It's just auto marked as spam. That's not shadow banning. If it was shadow banned, the user who posted it would still see it, but nobody else would.
It might be annoying, but the hyperbole is more annoying, to me, personally.
@poet can you explain the difference a bit more? When a post is marked as spam, does that mean the original poster does not see it... i.e. access to it vanishes for everyone besides the mods?
When a post is marked as spam, the user who posted it can see it in their submissions, and it will be marked as removed. Moderators of the sub can see it in their mod mail. The post can be approved by the moderators and it will show.
Shadow ban means that it's done stealthily. The user that posted it will be able to see it in their submissions, and if they visit the subreddit, they will be able to see it posted.
But nobody else on reddit will be able to see it. This is done as to not alert the user that their post is not showing, and it will seem to them that simply nobody found the link interesting.
I suspect that this is not done by reddit "because steemit is competition" but rather because a lot of users and moderators consistently mark posts from steemit as spam. The one time I posted a link from steemit on reddit, it got quite a lot of negativity. This is because if you try to google what steemit is, you mostly get articles saying it's a scam or a pyramid scheme.
FWIW over at /r/technology we have had to create special rules just for cryptocurrency blogspam because there is so much of it. The trouble is people promoting those get rich quick schemes and other nonsense.
From what I can tell there are no specific rules against steemit so it is probably like you say people spamming steemit links bring the whole site into disrepute.
Can shadow banning be automated, or is a shadow ban always an explicit decision by a moderator to conceal a specific comment or post?
In our Reddit AMA, we made a comment that showed up to others as "Comment removed", however it appeared to us as if it had posted:
So I'm still pretty confused, as this "comment removed" seems identical to shadow banning in that the original poster cannot see that the comment was removed.
I'm not familiar with this specific case. I know people and websites can get blanket shadow banned. I also know it's not a tool available to subreddit moderators, only reddit moderators.
It's possible reddit moderators have other tools to make posts and comments appear differently to posters and everyone else. Quite devious.
Shadow bans are the province of admins not sub moderators. However there are sitewide automod rules that will flag some sites as spam (or some users) which will automatically pop up in the mod queue and will need to be manually approved by the mods. However when an item is reported like this it is not clear why it is marked and so maybe just removed from the queue out of a need to keep it clear.
The best course of action is to contact the mods of the sub and ask them why a submission has been removed. Assuming your account does not look like a spammer or a newbie account then they will look at it and can decide retroactively to approve it or suggest you resubmit it again and they can make sure it gets approved manually then.
Hope that clears up some confusion.
Did you read the other 2 articles he linked or no? This isn't an isolated issue there is a culture of censorship and moderator abuse at Reddit.
I'm a long time reddit user, and am familiar with the issues of the platform. My point is shadow banning != spam filter, and that's all this is.
Sorry, I was thinking your comment was in response to dhimmel but it is actually a response to OP.
That is what happens. The user who posts it can still see it but no one else can.
Also them going out of their way to override the subreddit overrides shows serious intent to censor.
I have a video of facebook doing the same to me too from months ago.. Although not for all steemit links, just most of them.
Actually, in FBs case, the comments were being literally deleted in front of me - not just shadowbanned.
I was banned from posting to Discus for a while after posting steemit.com links.
Either we made it into their spam list because people were spamming with steemit links, or someone doesn't like competition, like, at all.
The former. 98% certainty.
German youtube banned a video, where i explained how to convert SBD into Bitcoin
https://steemit.com/zensurtube/@felix.herrmann/youtube-sperrt-deutsche-videos-ueber-steemit
Hah. They will be buried and they know it.
Reddit is one of my most visited site beside Steemit. This is a sad move Reddit...
We need these stories to go viral. Imagine if redditors knew.
One workaround I've found; we have a nickname for local steemians, #mallsballers. (named after a local sculpture)
Google "mallsballers" and you're going to not just find Steemit links, but also the local scene.
Really good for dodging the eye of Sauron on Facebook.