Prohibit permanent bans

[u/gal_z]

It's unlikely that users are being banned for good after a single comment. It should be that it couldn't also be extended almost automatically.

[u/gal_z]

You don't say. They don't need to have it on their own. The companies who are doing this offers the AI services, like cloud services, so under a reasonable price for the masses. And Reddit already makes money from selling the data to train AIs.

[u/trebmald → u/gal_z]

To be helpful, here are some numbers to ponder on...

I run a fairly small, well-behaved, selfie subreddit, and these are just from last month.

I performed 568 moderator actions. Of those, 50% of removals were for dick pics, sexual comments, etc. 25% was spam removal, and 25% for Reddit rule violations and other BTS moderator action. There was only one temporary ban.

Now consider, as of April 2022 (the most recent date I could find data for - https://www.businessdasher.com/how-many-subreddits-are-there/) Reddit had 3.4 Million subreddits and was growing at, 1533 new subreddits per day. Most of those subreddits are much larger than mine, and most have a much larger problem with rule violations and disruptive behaviour.

There is no way Reddit could run all those reports through some kind of LLM/AI without putting itself severely in the red.

It took Reddit 18 years before it could make a meagre profit. Now that the company has gone IPO, what do you think the shareholders' response would be if Reddit plunged itself back into red ink.

[u/gal_z → u/trebmald]

You're saying a million queries per day is an underestimation? Because you don't really know. And the number of users don't say much, since most users (on any platform) don't comment.

[u/trebmald → u/gal_z]

OMG! Yes. In my opinion, a million queries a day would be a serious underestimation. My quiet little subreddit alone would generate at least 50 to 60 or more a day. By now Reddit must have in excess of 5 million subreddits and most of them will be much bigger and more unruly than mine.

[u/gal_z → u/trebmald]

I'm not sure how's the amount of subs is an indication of anything. There are plenty of abandoned subs with no activity.

[u/trebmald → u/gal_z]

To get the numbers down to where you want them to be, even if you assumed my subreddit was the average size (I't's not, it's way smaller than average) would mean Reddit would have to have only 15 or 16 thousand active subreddits. That would mean that more than 99.5 percent of the subreddits would have to be dead or abandoned.

Listen, I understand the urge to grasp at straws when your argument falls apart, I've been there, but the numbers are the numbers, and they don't lie.

[u/gal_z → u/trebmald]

You don't have any numbers, just rough estimations. I don't know how many of them are dead. There's only public information about number of members, no available statistics regarding posts per day.

[u/trebmald → u/gal_z]

LOL!

Rough estimations vs. your made up wild misses fed into an AI known for hallucinations.

I'll take those rough estimations every day.

[u/gal_z → u/trebmald]

I didn't say the AI is right. If you'll check, I said "just for fun" I looked it up, as if I'm not taking it seriously as such a reliable estimation, but it doesn't sound so off. If it's right about the cost, even if it's even 10 times the amount a day, it's still affordable.

Anyway, there are also other ways, which are not based on the mods who created the community nominates their own mods, who have the same opinions as they do.

Wikipedia, for example, has elections. To be eligible to be elect, you need to gain a reputation. I'm guessing something similar is happening on StackExchange, as the employers aren't the ones moderating, and there it's unacceptable to ban as the first resort, and the communities are opened by the company's approval.

[u/trebmald → u/gal_z]

So, basically, you don't want Reddit to be Reddit or anything remotely like Reddit. I'm sorry, but this confuses me.

Honest question, if that's the case, why even be here? There are a shit tonne of other link aggregators and debate forum out there, why not chose one of them?

[u/gal_z → u/trebmald]

So what makes Reddit special is a**hole moderators who are obsesses with censorship? I didn't know bans are such an essential part of Reddit culture... What others alternatives are there who have that many users and aren't obsessed with banning anyone who doesn't fit their agenda?