Y'know, it strikes me that if reddit admins and mods would just straight up admit they want to ban people for political or other wrongthink reasons, the site would actually be a bit more respectable (only a
little) because at least at that point they're just fucking owning it. It's not like anybody believes it's an apolitical comms platform anyway.
Also what the fuck are these moderators doing that they need tools that do more than 100 API calls a minute? Seriously moderating is looking at a post and deciding if you delete or ban the user
For years I've seen people pose similar questions to all the idiot mods on reddit clamoring for better/more "tools." And for simpler questions like "what 'tools' are you missing?" they have never given a satisfactory answer.
The truth is the mods want admin powers. We know the real "tools" they want and we know why the admins have never provided them (that we know of): they want to be able to shadowban (or even just directly ban) users they hate from all of reddit. They want to be able to see full logs of user activity (including votes, browsing habits, etc.) to "investigate" users to harass or "screen" users before "permitting" them to post in their treasured, beloved subs, or to target them for permabans from reddit.
The "100 API calls per minute isn't enough!" complaint gives it away. There's only a handful of non-spammy actions (technically, not "morally") I can think of that could actually bump into that limit.
- Banning a specific user from all subreddits someone mods in one UI action. Powermods love "revenge banning" or "pre-emptive banning" (users who posted in r/The_Donald frequently found themselves pre-emptively banned from subs they'd never posted in). I'm sure there's no blanket ban API call to accomplish this in one request, so this would take one call per subreddit (and powermods might have dozens or even hundreds). I'm sure once this "mood" strikes there's gonna be multiple users in that angry mod's sights.
- Deep-diving a user's history (one call per 100 posts, I think) for "review" or "investigation" (i.e. harassment, doxing, inspection for wrongthink, etc.) and archiving for future use or to justify blanket bans.
- Searching many subs at once (whether a given powermod mods them or not) for no-no words to find users to ban or report to the admins. The r/AgainstHateSubs faggots undoubtedly do this by hand because they're that filled with hatred and convinced they're "on the right side of history," so they think it's their ordained task to hunt down wrongthink across reddit to find subs to target.
The general gist here is that the "tools" mods want all amount to having a great big "FUCK YOU, BUDDY!" button they can push for any given user to "punish" them. No legitimate "moderation" action should require more than a couple API calls, as legitimate moderation does not involve "blanket" actions except in extraordinary situations (which should absolutely be deliberately tempered by time gates to prevent exactly the kind of abuse these scumbags want to engage in).
They don't want to openly admit this, so they constantly whine about not having the "right tools" to "effectively moderate" and then refuse to go into further detail about what exactly that means. I honestly don't know
why they won't admit this openly, since they routinely delete posts or threads (and ban users) and then change the sub's rules to forbid whatever they just nuked so they can claim "well we decided to add a rule after nuking that because it doesn't really belong here." And it's blindingly obvious to anyone who sees it in action (and the admins clearly don't care, or even quietly support/encourage it).
Do those users ever find out that the things they say can have a real world reaction. Are any of the many posters who told this young man to do these things, will they have to help him pick up the pieces?
No. The tranny community at large makes it a point to
never acknowledge detransitioners or really anybody who's entered the pipeline who express regret. Reddit's tranny contingent is no different. In fact, they're arguably worse since reddit users practically
never admit being wrong under any circumstances (even in those theatrical "mea culpa" struggle sessions they post with generic flowery language like "we could have handled this better, we have procedures in place now to prevent this from happening again, etc.").
Some of the 3rd party apps let you one-click ban people, including without opening the post;
If the admins had any decency, they'd openly state this as a reason they're putting limits (and costs) on the API. You've got no business one-click banning somebody from any view except that of an offending post. If you've got a legitimate reason to ban a user, surely it shouldn't be hard to find a post exhibiting that reason.
Banning
should not be a rapid-fire action. I'd even go so far as to say on a massive site like reddit, ban actions should be time-gated (meaning you can only make the "ban user from sub" API call once every few seconds, or as frequently as desired but with a server-side enforced cooldown that increases with multiple calls and decays again over time when you stop. Mass bans
should be a deliberate and time-consuming action, specifically to make "rage bans" painful (or at least require more coordination) and eliminate that dopamine hit from smashing the instant-response "FUCK YOU, BUDDY" button.
Of course, all of this sidesteps another big reason reddit is trying to neuter third-party apps and said app developers are upset about it -- reddit's own app displays ads (that enrich reddit) and third-party apps don't (and they usually display their own ads too). This move will essentially demonetize third-party apps by reducing their access level and usage.
