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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.
Here's an old discussion, from right after we moved.
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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.
I found his use of the Russian angled bracket quotes absolutely hilarious and he did know what he was doing. Nobody uses those outside of old printed books. The modern Russian speaking internet? Not a chance. Still pretty funny though.
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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!
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Specifically, did we ever see these threats? I hit bedrock here
On reddit Zorba:
Poster:
Zorba
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...
I'm personally giga device banned from reddit. Even with updating an IP and spoofing several finger printing things and going in with a VPN any account I create has every post auto hidden and the password to the account doesn't work to log in. Almost certainly for /r/drama related posting though. Things like that were becoming more common.
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I think I caught a 1 day site-wide ban for saying "tranny" or something on there. (actually something less offensive but along those lines I guess, because whatever it was didn't attract any attention from the local mods)
The problem was probably not so much "attracting admin attention" as "attracting the attention of people who hate you and want you and your family dead -- but failing that will report you to the reddit admins"; same difference in the end.
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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?
I just tried to count how many times that happened and had to use both hands and take a shoe off, so it definitely wasn't one time. But iirc the most prolific of those guys is still unbanned and active on theschism (throwaway0# or something), unless I'm mixing him up with someone else.
For some reason it doesn't seem to spark the same reddit admin ire as all the other stuff.
How do you get that high? I've been around since the days of the /r/ssc culture war thread and can count the times I remember seeing on one hand.
Yes, I am still unbanned and active on theschism. I would guess that I don't spark the ire of reddit admins primarily because I'm only really active on theschism and don't bring up pedophilia very often (and am very careful about what I say when I do) making it unlikely anyone bothers to report my comments. I think reddit admins are in a position similar to the mods here in that they respond reactively to user complaints rather than proactively looking for "bad" content, only on a much larger scale, so it's easy to fly under the radar if you avoid high traffic/particularly contentious communities and don't have a comment history that is pretty much entirely about pedophilia.
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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.
My guess is that once the escape hatch construction got under production it became a matter of motivation. Easier to stay involved in development when it is known a switch would definitely happen. They added a lot of features the place would never have on reddit, so that's probably another bonus that mods would value more highly than users.
I think I would have preferred the escape hatch remain dormant until necessary too, but I don't blame them for the full commit. If the place is gonna move it's better to do so in an orderly fashion over an emergency. If it's going to die or fail because of it, so be it. Not like the place didn't see evaporative cooling complaints after the move to the standalone sub.
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«Guillemets»
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It wasn't "((( )))". It was "<< >>", taken by the admins (or maybe "anti-evil operations") to be "((( )))".
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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.
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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.
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.
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