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michaelnovatitoday at 4:19 AM2 repliesview on HN

This is not my industry, no. Had the author reached out for comment they could publish my claims. More interested in a hit piece than the truth.


Replies

4bpptoday at 4:49 AM

Even if we accept all your claims at face value, your behaviour in your capacity as the moderator of that subreddit was still immoral. However you feel about it, being a moderator is a voluntary responsibility which comes with an expectation of impartiality and service at the expense of, not in furtherance of, your personal goals.

At best, if everything you say is true, what you are doing is akin to proudly volunteering as a firefighter so that you can slow-walk the response if a fire is ever reported at the NXIVM HQ. Your crusade against NXIVM may be righteous, and it might even be universally considered a net good if its HQ were to burn down, but it would still raise a lot of eyebrows if it came out that you intended to use your position in that fashion.

edit: To be clear, I sympathise with your claim that you are being subjected to a one-sided hit, and am starting to feel uneasy with the dogpiling atmosphere that is building in this subthread. However, it is understandable to me why this is happening - fundamentally, Reddit has become a town square that is really not engineered correctly to be one. In a town square, people want to choose their leaders, but subreddits are by design "storefronts", in which leaders (moderators) choose their people. This tension is resolved by a very unpleasant jerry-rigged substitute for democratic control: the one way you can "vote out" a moderator (who has the backing or indifference of everyone above him) is to apply psychological pressure, or other harm (such as the reputational damage your company is no doubt taking as we speak), until they crack and resign. This is sort of democratic because larger fractions of the "electorate" can achieve it more easily, but even turning up to such a "vote" that you ultimately lose entails social violence.

It doesn't seem like you are willing to resign, nor to put your moderator status up for a community vote (if that could even be made fair, after you presumably banned a lot of would-be voters, and conversely could accuse the other side of botting/brigading). What other options do those who do not want the town square to be moderated by you have?

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kameit00today at 6:30 AM

Your own words:

>> I'm the co-founder of an interview prep mentorship platform [...] my company's services so there is a small amount of overlap on the most experienced end of Codesmith and the least experienced end of Formation. <<

https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/ana...