Reddit CEO admits to altering user comments that were critical of him

That's the problem -- there should be no "Reddit". The only interesting part of Reddit are the communities and there's no reason why the_donald and SRS can't exist under the same reddit.com domain. I really wish /u/spez et al. would take a hands-off approach except for cases where users are breaking the law.

I disagree. As nice as it would be, subreddits do not exist in isolation from one another and very often, trends and behavior set in one subreddit trickle to others. This was noticeable leading up to the removal of /r/fatpeoplehate et al, and it's noticable right now. The flamewar between the radical left and right flows onto almost all default subreddits, and it does drive overall quality down.

Yep, that's the libertarian dream. It makes me nostalgic for the 90's when the web was new.

Now we know that spam and abuse make any large Internet forum suck. Your choice: moderation or cesspool.

Also, getting rid of the really extreme filth on the Internet is no fun and people generally have to be paid to do it, which is one of the things that keeps larger social networks in business.

"no fun" is an understatement. It can be psychologically damaging. I found this article really revealing:

http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/13/11387934/internet-moderato...

I say this all the time and people immediately accuse me of being a racist.

Reddit should let everything organically perform, and remove things that are against the law. Not things that are against their left-leaning political agenda.

Aaron Swartz would not like Reddit in it's current shape.

I'm not convinced. Maybe a lot of people think of 4chan as a "cesspool" but I think it's actually quite functional with minimal moderation. They have a small volunteer staff to delete the absolute worst of the worst and let the rest roam free. The most radical thing they've ever done is made containment boards to keep the noise down.

I think the real problem is that sites like 4chan makes a tiny fraction of what Reddit does.

It works for 4chan's users or they wouldn't hang out there. But the level of moderation is a competitive feature. Users decide where to hang out based on the quality of discussion, and moderation has a direct effect on that (in both directions - too heavy-handed or too hands-off).

Also, in the end, the people who host a forum get to choose whether they really want to host a cesspool or not. If it's not working for them, they can shut it down, or maybe outsource moderation to Facebook or Disqus.

That's very long. Maybe a TL;DR?

Here's an excerpt from the article:

In an October 2014 Wired story, Adrian Chen documented the work of front line moderators operating in modern-day sweatshops. In Manila, Chen witnessed a secret "army of workers employed to soak up the worst of humanity in order to protect the rest of us." Media coverage and researchers have compared their work to garbage collection, but the work they perform is critical to preserving any sense of decency and safety online, and literally saves lives — often those of children. For front-line moderators, these jobs can be crippling. Beth Medina, who runs a program called SHIFT (Supporting Heroes in Mental Health Foundational Training), which has provided resilience training to Internet Crimes Against Children teams since 2009, details the severe health costs of sustained exposure to toxic images: isolation, relational difficulties, burnout, depression, substance abuse, and anxiety. "There are inherent difficulties doing this kind of work," Chen said, "because the material is so traumatic."

The whole thing is worth a read, in a couple of sessions if necessary.

But, to be clear, at the moment Reddit is a moderated cesspool. It's neither embracing free-speech, or quality-control... it's managing to irk both sides and remain unsure of what kind of platform it really wants to be when it grows up.

But there's a huge difference between strictly moderation the (default) subreddits in a fair, neutral or balanced way, and deleting whole subcommunities because they "spam" r/all. Maybe a better idea. Would be to delete r/all?!

I knew Aaron a little (via mailing lists and stuff).

You are absolutely right that he wouldn't like Reddit in its current shape. But not for the reasons you seem to think.

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/shifting1

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/001599

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/newmccarthy

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/001606

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/001173

One of the big problems still is brigading. Even creating a containment board doesn't stop that, and I suspect having a board allows bad behavior to be legitimized through peer approval, and snowballs it. Also, it's so much easier to shitpost than generate quality content, just like its easier to lie than to debunk a lie.

4chan has a much, much narrower demographic appeal than a generalist site like Reddit.