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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

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Eternal September is a real thing that happens to communities when too many newcomers arrive and don't adapt to the existing culture. We literally have a rule asking to not link to here from high participation platforms. This community is small, and the mods already have to work very hard to keep the current quantity of us cretins obeying the rules.

We just saw a sliver of attention to our little Rationalist corner of the internet by a US Vice Presidential candidate on the most popular podcast in the world. Even if he's not pointing people directly to this site, I think it's completely valid to believe that there are ways where fractions of fractions of Joe Rogan listeners find their way here. "What was that article Vance mentioned?" "I liked that article, where could I discuss it?" "No talking politics on Reddit? Where else could I go?" And we get a few thousand new users. Sure, that's unlikely, but that's not a criterion for making a claim here.

If you disagree then please engage with the substance instead of doing so with mockery.

please engage with the substance instead of doing so with mockery.

Fair. As I've said here a few times, I loath safteyism. I find the hypothetical threat scenario so implausible that mentioning it screams of a persecution complex. I should have engaged more substantively.

I was against the move from reddit. I actually never saw a full explanation of why that was necessary. I recall a discussion of "((( )))" use trigging and auto-admin response). Iirc zorba said a full explanation would be forthcoming, but I missed it. I could be misremembering and no explanation was offered, but I remain open to one. That said, I thought having a backup motte was a good idea.

I recall a discussion of "((( )))" use trigging and auto-admin response).

We had a Russian regular here by the name of Ilforte. Really interesting guy, quite prolific. The russian language apparently uses these weird double-parens-looking symbols rather than quotation marks, and some newbie mistook them for the triple-parens "echo marks" of infamy. Someone else responded explaining the difference, saying, "these:[wierd unicode double parens things] are russian quote marks, these: "((())) are triple parens, it's a different thing."

The reply explaining the difference got flagged for anti-semitic content by the reddit admins.

Thanks! That fleshes out my memory, but I'm still lost as to what the mods knew regarding the need to move. Was it "safteyism"? Did they say 'we wont elaborate further at this time' or am I hallucinating that?

I'm interested in that because at the time I thought the move could be plausible, but was leaning paranoic. However, there is a lot I didn't know as a casual reader. I'm trying to put context around OPs claim that JD Vance allusion to a Scott Alexander article threatens the motte. Is this a pattern of persecutorial complexion, or am I off my rocker.

The Reddit admins were in contact with the mods, consistently threatening them.

Nobody wanted to move here man lol. We lost a solid chunk of the community and now Zorba has to maintain the site.

I was wondering about that. I bailed on Reddit years ago and just chalked up 'The Motte' (the only sub I really participated in) as a sad victim to my need to keep the ol' media filters clean. I was glad to re-join when I found the site, but I couldn't tell if there was still some component that touched Reddit. Very interesting!

Specifically, did we ever see these threats? I hit bedrock here

On reddit Zorba:

Alright, so the admins are paying attention to us now. Not going into details, they aren't relevant and I don't want to draw their attention more; ask me again once this is done and I'll vent.

Poster:

Ok, it's a year later. Spill. I'm really curious about the fucked-up internal politics of Reddit.

Zorba

I am confused why this is coming up so often, you're the second in the last two days and I'd totally forgotten about it for months before that.

But anyway, out of a possible overabundance of caution, I'll PM it to you.

AFAICT, the threats were never discussed openly. I could be wrong. I only ask because this new threat rang some bells. Lots of arguably paranoid cloak and dagger stuff in the Meta: the motte is dead thread. I'm still grateful for all the hard work that goes into this place. Its the kind of place I can ask: does this place exist here because of a persecutorial complex; or was the move, like, justified...

From memory... for a long time concerns about the CW thread being targeted by admins were elated through security through obscurity wisdom. Once the admin notices came -- and enough examples of subs of similar/smaller size being whacked or castrated -- that was a confidence shot. I do recall one point was that admins wouldn't clarify certain things for the mod team.

Reddit shuts down subs they don't like. Reddit admins gut and replace subreddit moderation teams they don't like. Subreddits change rules, like "don't mention trans issues at all", and similar requests at the behest of admin interactions. As I recall in one of those meta threads there was a mod from /r/PoliticalCompassMemes that chimed in with his dealings with admins and the moderation changes he had to make because of admin requests. Or maybe it was the /r/drama mods, because I remember they offered to host The Motte.

I don't recall Zorba or mods claiming TheMotte was being especially targeted or persecuted. Being targeted wasn't necessary to get dunked on or ordered to change. Somewhere back there it is explicitly said that the decision to move included the fact that Zorba would rather the project end than have to do something like censor all discussions on Topic X. Plenty of people said don't bother or not a big deal to censor whatever as I imagine you've seen from looking through the old threads.

The CW thread hosts holocaust deniers, HBD autists, and that one time that guy candidly admitted he was a (non-offending) pedophile. It's not a reddit friendly space-- which polices content and not just tone. It's not that strange to consider its time on reddit is limited by how long its controversy remains unknown. Even without the details of the admin correspondence or principles, when a place like the gendercritical sub gets booted off the site there's not a lot of confidence that a place like The Motte is secure. Maybe they're less heavy handed now, but there was lots of overt admin actions in that time period on reddit.

Maybe Zorba moved as a big ruse so he could put in a bunch of volunteer work and pay for webhosting. Seems unlikely though?

hahah no I think Zorbas dedication is unimpeachable. This fleshes out what I gathered from perusing the megathread about the move. A Seattle sub mod chimed in about getting new admin attention over milquetoast issues like homelessness and trans stuff. I suppose the chilling effect was bad enough, though I do think they should have forced the admins to kick us off with an escape plan in place. On one hand, I have a very open to any mere speech, but I can well understand why a private company wouldn't want themotte on reddit even if I think its the pinnacle of moderated free speech. The move did what I expected, but it was perhaps inevitable.

weird double-parens-looking symbols

«Guillemets»

It wasn't "((( )))". It was "<< >>", taken by the admins (or maybe "anti-evil operations") to be "((( )))".

There are some admin posts from around the time of the move that discuss it. For the record, it was far from clear that the sub would be banned. There are still places on Reddit that are “edgier” than this place, like the red scare podcast subreddit and /r/4chan, plus a few others.

I'm not sure if /r/blockedandreported was as large at the time of the move as it is now, but that place has functionally taken over from the pure culture-warry side of the Motte (and CWR, by extension, which sees zero activity) and is as a result edgier than we used to be.

But the people there are, on average, quite a bit dimmer; anything more than a one-liner is a waste of your time.

Of course, that's also a double-edged sword; we might not be as edgy, but intelligent dissent is far more threatening than unintelligent dissent to any political actor who's paying attention because it actually has half a chance of persuading their opponents, and causing lasting damage for the regime if they succeed.

Because we were in the eye of Sauron. Why? Well, because the admins put us there. Why did they put us there? I suggest you ask them.

Why did they put us there? I suggest you ask them.

This is a genuine curiosity of mine. Iirc, the reddit mods were explicitly not going to explain their actions beyond vague gestures to the Eye of Sauron somewhere around the time Scott (happily) landed in the financial security provided by substack.