The Story of Codesmith: How a Competitor Crippled a $23.5M Bootcamp By Becoming a Reddit Moderator
Posted by Happy_Junket_9540@reddit | programming | View on Reddit | 204 comments
Saw this on theprimeagen stream, thought it would be interested to share. Anyone here who did a codesmith bootcamp?
kovalgenius@reddit
I went to Codesmith, albeit quite a long time ago in 2016. Honestly one of the best decisions of my life. I'm pretty sure my entire cohort (probably about 18 people) got software engineering jobs, and it changed everyones career trajectory for the positive. There was high quality coursework, a close community (still friends with several cohort mates), and strong post grad help with getting a job. I doubt I could have found a better bootcamp at the time. You could just tell everyone involved just plain cared. Feel free to ask me any questions
ACoderGirl@reddit
I believe you. There definitely was a time when boot camps worked well for getting a job (and much faster than a degree). And absolutely getting a good job in this field (especially back around 2016) is a life changing thing. We're in a very privileged field. We often make amazing money with cushy, safe jobs with loads of benefits. I've worked a lot of jobs and all the non software jobs were pretty damn miserable.
That said, I'm skeptical that boot camps are viable anymore, at least not until the market seriously turns around (if ever). Boot camps were far competitive when there practically weren't enough people with degrees. I imagine they're still useful for networking and for a more practical focus, but it's a big, expensive gamble.
jexmex@reddit
Be prepared to be told your are a bot. I have no idea what CS is, but this thread seems like a minefield.
knobbyknee@reddit
This article is illustrative on so many levels. The fist one is of course the defamation of Codesmith and the ruinous consequences for an entrepreneur and people associated with him. The second one is how one evil little monster managed to do it all.
The third one is how good invstigative journalism works. Make through, verifiable research, so there is no possible refutation of what is going on.
The fourth one is that it illustrates the operation of skilled bad actors in other contexts. This is how some political parties operate. This is how other companies try to sow doubt about their competitors. This is how nations try to destabilize other nations.
In particular, this is the core operation of one of the directorates in the Russian FSB. They have tens of thousands of operators who have the sole job of sowing doubt abroad. They are in all social media, in letters to the editor and many other communication channels. Their target is not only Ukraine, but weakening the coheision and resolve in the Western world.
If one man could cripple Codesmith this badly, how badly do you think this organization affects us all?
sphyko@reddit
Would you also care mention how the so called "Western world" has fucked every other country in various forms and degrees and still do? Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, India, Africa, South America are still suffering from the evil done to them and it still continues.
knobbyknee@reddit
What a perfect illustration of what I said in my comment. Here is somebody trying to take the focus away from the FSB disinformation operations by trying to befuddle people. Colonialism is a thing of the past and the US operations in Latin America were part of th Cold War. Russia has huge ongoing operations in the present. Let's focus on things we can change, instead of focusing on history. History can't be changed, though there is no shortage of attempts to do so.
eehmmeh@reddit
YOU are an illustration of what you said. YOU are trying to take the focus away from the Codesmith story to a "russkies bad btw". You are blaming others of what YOU are doing.
As to your claims of thousands of FSB agents under everyone's beds: lets remember year 2022 how entirety of the internet (english and russian speaking alike) was shit up with "evil russkies are raping/killing/eating/stealing holy-innocent-didn't-do-nothing-ever ukrainians" simultaneously with "entirety of russian army is now dead". Was it also FSB doing or was it someone else?
knobbyknee@reddit
Ahh, you mean people posting the truths that have been verified far beyond the requirements of any court of justice?
Concering the deaths in the Russian army, it has been verified from multiple sources (including Russian official ones) that a larger number of soldiers have been killed than were included in the initial invasion of Ukraine.
The Russian FSB are not the only ones posting to the Internet. They aren't even the only ones posting lies to the Internet.
eehmmeh@reddit
For "truths" to be true there needs to be a hard evidence like victims, photos and videos. All I ever saw was textual reports and those ain't proof of anything. Take the stories about baby rape for example. The source for those was Ukrainian ombudswoman Lydmila Denisova. She told lots of awful stories but never provided any evidence or shown any victims. She was later fired for failing her duties as ombudswoman, including the failure to provide the evidence for her claims. The "verified truths" were total lies.
Who died and how many is not the point. The point is that there has been a much larger psyop campaign conducted by the party that not only can reach much farther and deeper than FSB but also owns all media platforms. FSB is nothing in comparison to that and yet you decided to paint them as the big bad.
Lies ain't lies if there's evidence. Truths ain't truths if there isn't.
sphyko@reddit
I know that I am giving some strong bot/troll vibes but I was replying in good faith to your comment. I know Russia is pretty evil and my comment was not trying to prove otherwise. I was just pointing out that the thing you accuse Russia of is also done by the western world: propaganda, election medelling, war crime, human rights violation etc.
And I disagree with your current comment. Colonialism may a thing of the past (it is not really, it still continus in differrent form) but its impact are present and billions feel it. Your response is the usual expected one from a person of "the West". "What can we do? Those were the old days. It does not happen now. We are truly sorry."
If they are sorry then (the colonizers and their citizines) why don't they give repartitions to countries which they had colonized? Should not they help goverments of such countries setup food banks, hosptials, roads, schools and give students of these countries access to educational resources (maybe online)?
"No that we can't do. That will be unfair. It were our forefathers who had done these horrible acts and it were they who have benefitted from colonialism. We can't help these countries."
Of course there is no money for feeding the (poor)[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starvation#/media/File:Hunger_Map_2020_World_Food_Programme.svg]. Do you see a pattern in the linked image?
jexmex@reddit
Sir this is a programming sub, not the UN.
sphyko@reddit
Like that would have made a difference. But you are right and I will stop.
danglotka@reddit
Thanks 5 day old account
sphyko@reddit
Your comment me realize that I was so wrong. Thanks bald person.
octnoir@reddit
One no-life loser was able to cripple an entire company, control their target's online presence, warp Google, warp all the public Generative AI tools, basically create a community of fellow haters for plausible deniability, create personal harassment against people including kids, cripple company trust, pressure competitor employees out, bribe an employee to leak proprietary information, sent several employees into a mental health spiral... and would have gotten away basically completely scott free it it weren't for a few investigative journalists.
ONE person.
Now scale this up with:
More teams
Generative AI
Bot spam
More motive
More money and resources
This stuff is contagious. There's a risk that the article here spreads this tactic because again Reddit won't do shit, and legal is expensive, and the people who know that best are patent trolls who deliberately setup scenarios "Pay us $5000, or waste $25,000 defending yourself"
I worry what is going to happen to a lot of small vulnerable companies that happen to incur the ire of some no lifer or someone with resources or a large competitor looking to take out a small startup on the cheap.
Moto_Davidson@reddit
Contact an attorney - defamation of character is a real thing and carries civil liabilities. Talk to an attorney and ask them for advice on how to handle it.
grundee@reddit
Yes, this is clearly lawyer territory. Why did this guy spend years watching some asshole defame him and directly interfere with his business and customers and not use any of that $20m+ valuation to talk to a lawyer?
As an armchair r/legaladvice addict my uninformed question to a lawyer would be if we have grounds for a defamation and/or tortious interference lawsuit. Name Reddit too since they are providing a platform of legitimacy to this campaign. I bet so much as 100 seconds of Reddit-lawyer time reading a cease and desist would be enough for Reddit Inc to rethink this person's moderator status. You can be as much of a jackass as you want as a moderator as long as you don't cost Reddit money.
Where is the author's business lawyer on any of this?
remy_porter@reddit
IANAL, and am also not a lawyer, but I think Section 230 would apply here- Reddit is not responsible for the things its users post. You can start asking questions about whether they're consistently applying their moderation policies and TOS, but the basic rules are you have to go after the users for what they post, not the media site they post on. But, Reddit has tampered with moderation before, which may weaken their position.
lelanthran@reddit
There's an argument to be made that, due to editorial control (i.e. modding/deleting posts, banning users, etc), that they are responsible for not banning/moderating/etc over a 3 year period.[1]
It's a reasonable position to take, and as we've seen in other cases, section 230 doesn't always apply when the abuse is persistent, constant, regular and frequent.[2]
Section 230 protection was never intended as "allow stalkers, persecutors and abusers the ability to repeatedly, consistently and frequently stalk, persecute or abuse an individual".
(Courts do routinely invoke the "The spirit of the law" in interpretation of laws. That, after all, is there primary job; it's not to blindly apply legislation to a case which ticks the specific legislation tickboxes)
[1] I am not a lawyer, and even if I was, I am not their lawyer. I'm mostly confused why they didn't approach a lawyer before going bankrupt - the mere threat of a suit could have shut this down long before bankruptcy.
[2] ISTR a story/suit involving a revenge site where the site claimed Section 230 protection but was ruled against anyway, because a reasonable person would expect that a site takes reasonable precautions after doxing/bullying/persecution/whatever of an individual was repeatedly brought to the sites attention.
DefendSection230@reddit
I'm am not a lawyer either, but I do claim to be pretty knowledgeable about Section 230. That argument would fail.
230 leaves in place something that law has long recognized: direct liability. If someone has done something wrong, then the law can hold them responsible for it.
Section 230 is all about putting the liability on whichever party created the violation under the law. Reddit was not stalking, persecuting or abusing an individual.
The "spirit" of 230 was to facilitate the ability for websites to engage in 'publisher' or 'editorial' activities without the threat of innumerable lawsuits over every piece of content on their sites for those activities.
grundee@reddit
Sure, but having a lawyer draft a letter saying that they will assert Section 230 applies costs $. Dropping a problematic moderator is free. And $ quickly becomes $$$ when the author's lawyer questions why it seems they have the ability to reign in moderators that allow other types of speech, but not this speech for which their client has established monetary and reputational damage, and hey, maybe we can have a judge sort through all of this for $$$$$.
Cheaper to tell the unpaid volunteer to GTFO and not deal with this headache.
remy_porter@reddit
It’s fair to assume a company the scale of Reddit already has in house counsel. So it’s not like they’re paying billable hours at some exorbitant rate. Fire of a quick form response and move on.
grundee@reddit
No company wants their in-house counsel embroiled in lengthy litigation. No matter how you cut it, it costs money. If I were their counsel (and also a lawyer, and also knew what I was talking about), I imagine I would say, "respond asserting Section 230, kick the moderator anyway, admit no fault."
Author gets what they want, and now they have a single target for litigation.
remy_porter@reddit
But it likely won't be lengthy litigation. It's likely, "Section 230 applies, leave us alone."
It's important because you don't want to set a precedent of letting legal threats impact moderating decisions, specifically because if you are inconsistent about moderating decisions, it erodes your ability to invoke Section 230, as you're now making more editorial decisions.
Now, if someone points to a line in the TOS that's being violated, then it's faster and easier to kick the mod. But that's different than defamation.
MagicWishMonkey@reddit
They can say Section 230 applies, but that won't stop someone from filing a lawsuit arguing that it doesn't. It's unlikely reddit wants to pay their counsel to waste time on an unnecessary lawsuit when getting rid of a moderator takes zero time and resources.
jameson71@reddit
Doesn't pretty much every TOS or contract these days say the big business can do whatever they want, including changing the agreement at any time, and the individual has no rights, not even those guaranteed to him by the constitution, such as use of the court system rather than "arbitration?"
remy_porter@reddit
Sure, but it still requires consistent application if you want 203 protections.
jameson71@reddit
That's the part I was responding to. They can drop a mod any time they want for any or no reason.
remy_porter@reddit
But if they are doing it inconsistently, and at whim, it may risk their section 230. It’s not a hard red line, it’s fuzzy and there are risks about being capricious in your site wide moderation (in contrast to the volunteer mods, who are users, not employees).
DefendSection230@reddit
230 doesn't require consistency or prevent them from doing things on a whim. It would have no impact on 230.
bonerfleximus@reddit
Hi ANAL, Im Sam.
fried_green_baloney@reddit
My understanding is that defaming someone in their business or profession has lower standards of proof than other types of defamation - you don't have to show as much actual damage to win your case.
So an attorney is definitely indicated here.
remy_porter@reddit
That's not the case, no. Defamation, in general, has a lower standard of evidence because it's a civil claim, not a criminal one (criminal cases have a higher standard of evidence). But in all cases, defamation (libel, and slander) all require statements about the state of mind of the accused- you have to be able to demonstrate that they willfully and maliciously said what they said. Even with the lower standard of evidence in civil cases, that's hard to prove.
DysClaimer@reddit
It's not necessarily true that they would have to prove the speaker acted with actual malice. That's only true if the person claiming they were defamed is a public figure. I have no idea if this person would be in this case. Limited purpose public figures are a thing, so it's possible this person would be, but that's what you want to talk to the lawyer about.
But for ordinary defamation, between two private persons, you don't have to prove that the speaker knew the statement was false. A statement that the speaker sincerely believed was true, could still be defamation if it turned out to be false, and if the speaker was in some way negligent in not figuring that out before they made the statement. (And if all the other elements of defamation are met, etc...)
bladeofwill@reddit
Not a lawyer, but I would think the entity defamed is the company, not the founder, and I would expect most companies to be considered public figures.
Suppafly@reddit
Not true, look up 'defamation per se' which applies in a lot of these sorts of cases where you're claiming someone is doing something criminal or claiming they are bad at their jobs.
bunk3rk1ng@reddit
Lol no. That is not even close to matching the definition of defamation per se.
octnoir@reddit
It's not empirical proof though otherwise no murderer would get convicted because you cannot empirically prove the murder intended to murder or that every neuron was firing "murder" when he could be just lost or confused or self defense.
It is reasonable people having reasonable doubt.
Reasonable being the operative word.
And that guy is fucking crazy. Imagine having no actual life, no actual healthy relationships and being a bonofide paid Reddit moderating loser to sink your competitor company.
grundee@reddit
Shouldn't be hard to get representation at this point. Years ago they could have sent a C&D to cut this out, but now there are millions of dollars of damages caused by an officer in a company with assets to go after. Some rando talking shit on Reddit is not something any attorney will care about, but I could see everyone in this situation shutting up real fast while litigation is pending.
LucasRuby@reddit
Defamation requires the statements made to be factual and untrue. Matters of opinion (like "it's a waste of money") or truthful but misleading statements, aren't actionable.
My guess is that most of the things they said were either opinion or truthful but misleading, and his more important role as a moderator was removing comments defending Codesmith and thus not allowing the misleading claims to be corrected.
grauenwolf@reddit
Valuations mean nothing. What matters is how much actual cash they have.
ivereddithaveyou@reddit
Not at all true. Valuations are almost always intrinsically linked to the cash that they have. And valuations can be used to leverage more cash depending on leadership competency.
grauenwolf@reddit
Valuation are based on stock price.
If the company isn't publicly traded, then it's based the last round of investment funding. If someone buys 0.00001 of the company for $235, then the valuation is 23,500,000.
ivereddithaveyou@reddit
So we're not talking about publicly traded companies at this valuation. Apart from that you are exactly right, the value of the company is based on the last round of investment, the cash at hand.
grauenwolf@reddit
No it's not.
To continue the example, say the company I invested in throws a pizza party and spends 150 dollars. The valuation doesn't drop to 8,500,000 because they now only have 85 dollars in cash.
And even that's making assumptions. My investment may have been in the form of hardware or stocks in my company. In which case I may have given them no cash.
ivereddithaveyou@reddit
Are you sure about that? They just spent half of their cash on hand and didn't deliver any growth because of the pizza party. I'd value them down considerably.
Noone invests any of those things in startups, all cash. Nothing else is useful
grauenwolf@reddit
ivereddithaveyou@reddit
Clue is in the title bro, 23m valuation. Highly correlated to cash. I seem all that news, those aren't startups, they're working out their transition to incumbents.
Manbeardo@reddit
To be clear, the comment you’re replying to mistakenly says “$20m+ valuation”, but the $23.5M in the post title refers to their peak annual revenue, not valuation.
grauenwolf@reddit
Thank you.
grundee@reddit
True, but they have revenue, they have customers, they have $500 for a consult with a business attorney.
grauenwolf@reddit
I want to sue the person who stold me my house for fraud. The starting retainer is 15,000 USD. And it would be an easier case than slander in terms of the prep work needed.
raven_raven@reddit
It sure costs a lot. Still, if he had 80 employees, he probably should have had couple spare thousands to consult a lawyer and basically save his business.
grauenwolf@reddit
That's a good argument.
Manbeardo@reddit
If you read the article, you’d understand that the $23.5M in the headline was their peak annual revenue. There’s no mention of a valuation anywhere.
Again, if you read the article, you’d understand that the author is a third-party observer with no legal standing to file a lawsuit.
thecoode@reddit
Good advice, getting legal help sounds smart here.
beyphy@reddit
They could have. I'm not a lawyer. But I would imagine that some of the first questions a lawyer would ask is "How do you know that this was a conspiracy by certain people against the Codesmith brand as opposed to just people being upset with the service?" or "How do you know that the destruction of the brand was due to this coordinated attack as opposed to just the decline of the industry in general?" The truth is that they probably don't know and can't prove anything.
JaCraig@reddit
I work for a law firm but in IT. I am not a lawyer. But I know enough that they should 100% talk to an attorney if the post is accurate. They should have talked to an attorney a while ago.
Which-World-6533@reddit
Reddit Moderation is absolutely awful.
Reddit has become a twisted evil thing that is nothing like how it was years ago.
Freedom of discussion in most subs is heavily limited.
saint1997@reddit
UK subs especially. All the mods are too cowardly to act as themselves so they all hide behind that stupid Nicolabot account
Which-World-6533@reddit
Yep, the UK subs are awful and don't reflect the UK at all.
The main UK is usually swathes of "Comment removed by Moderator" because the Mods don't want unfortunate truths to come out.
multijoy@reddit
lol. No, it’s because posters like you want free reign to be massive racists.
Which-World-6533@reddit
Lol. These days "Racist" is a person who has a different opinion.
multijoy@reddit
No, in this case we're talking about actual racists.
Which-World-6533@reddit
That's a bit rich coming from you. Lol.
multijoy@reddit
Says the 9mo shitposting alt.
cake-day-on-feb-29@reddit
Which-World-6533@reddit
The person you are replying to is a Mod for the UK's police sub.
You can make your own inferences from that.
Which-World-6533@reddit
Lol. So predictable.
thetinguy@reddit
You realize you're commenting on an article about how reddit astroturfing led to the death of a business right?
cake-day-on-feb-29@reddit
Considering you call everyone you don't like a racist, I don't believe you.
Boy who cried wolf and all that.
Which-World-6533@reddit
The person you are replying to is a Mod for the UK's police sub.
multijoy@reddit
If you like. Given that you and I have never met, I am impressed at your attempt at extrapolation.
Nevertheless, you are a troll and not a very good one.
PeterNorthSolo@reddit
USA feels the same pain. We are being manipulated to believe the world thinks and acts as what the filtered conversations put out. I hope it makes you feel better to know that regular people see this, and it's not just you.
Which-World-6533@reddit
The acid test is to simply to go outside and the solution is to see for oneself.
Reality is vastly different from how a lot of Reddit portrays it.
PeterNorthSolo@reddit
Very true! Thanks for sharing this rare moment where my comment isn't automatically removed AND I end up talking to a real person, and not a bot!
[object Object]
cake-day-on-feb-29@reddit
Every local subreddit is like this. They are filled with political astroturfers who don't live there trying to control the conversation about topics they don't like.
Articunos7@reddit
It's the same for the Indian subreddit and most city subreddits of India. All moderators are biased on Reddit
sittingonahillside@reddit
ha, I was just banned from a UK subreddit for inciting violence. I said I was an advocate of the death penalty for people like Ian Watkins, although it's not something I can really support in reality because of innocent being people sentenced and the problem of human nature etc.
No nuance or discussion, just banned.
Thelmara@reddit
I mean, "I oppose the death penalty except for that one guy, he should be put to death" isn't very nuanced.
cake-day-on-feb-29@reddit
Idk, sounds reasonable to ban someone for saying they support something, then immediately saying they don't support it.
How would anyone be able to discuss anything with you if you can't even state your opinion one way or another on a topic? So weird.
Enerbane@reddit
I've been on Reddit for close to 15 years now. I've been seeing comments like this for about 15 years now.
Your first statement can be true, but it's not exactly a new problem.
Coffee_Ops@reddit
It has gotten progressively worse, and not steadily but in jumps and starts.
Default subs used to be immune to this-- but the 2016 elections started them down the road of suppressing contrary views, which came into sharp view post Dobbs when the mods started banning en masse anyone associated with a conservative sub (e.g. you posted there once 2 years ago).
Now in the wake of 2024 even conservative subs-- the ones youd expect to be die-hard constitutional originalists-- are banning contrary views.
At this point I would expect nothing but bias, from any sub that can carry a bias.
Thelmara@reddit
Lol, r-conservative has been banning people for contrary views for years.
Agent_03@reddit
Heck, over there they routinely permaban people who agree with them 99%... because Temu Muss0lini has flipped his stance overnight on that last 1%.
Their arguments for why that still somehow counts as free speech are so knotted up that I could use them as mittens... only they can make sense of them.
Agent_03@reddit
One of my favorite Reddit moments was getting to directly and publicly call out Jibrish (top mod of arr-Conservative) for the hypocrisy. arr-Conservative talks about free speech... while practicing the opposite. It was in a neutral community, so he couldn't abuse mod powers and had to just take it.
Almost as funny is seeing all the conservative folk get ::shocked:: about being banned there when they're suddenly permabanned for ever so slightly disagreeing with Trump on some small point.
Coffee_Ops@reddit
It was not apparent, and it was far more tolerant of contrary views than any liberal subs I was aware of. Certainly their discord is very hard to get banned from, unlike Bidencord in 2020 which would ban conservatives at the drop of the hat.
octnoir@reddit
No but it is getting far worse. External threats aside, Reddit has been bleeding good moderators because Reddit doesn't like intervening in egregious cases like this unless it is forced to.
Mods have been begging for years for better mod tools, active banning on people who flagrantly harass on multiple subreddits and more.
The easier you make moderation, the more you can retain good moderators. Good moderators aren't no life losers like this stalker. Good moderators are ones that can make this into a part time or low maintenance hobby - step in with their expertise, quickly make good decisions, and step out - and organizing with more moderators to divide up the pie and the community.
For obvious reasons this works better as a system. Someone having no life beyond say a coding boot camp subreddit means that person usually also has no real healthy life beyond it - no real friends, no real relationships, no real interests, just that.
People having a healthy balanced life make for better people and better moderators and community managers. Despite an army of unpaid moderators providing valuable expensive work, for free, Reddit doesn't really care, constantly exploits them, makes their lives miserable, and basically just encourages other no life losers to be moderators for the power trip.
Agent_03@reddit
Reddit Inc doesn't WANT good moderators. Good moderators stand up to Reddit when it acts shitty as a company. For example, the crappy Reddit API policy changes.
Iggyhopper@reddit
Not nearly as big of a problem as it is now.
bnelson@reddit
20 years. Nothing is even real.
Djamalfna@reddit
I think the new thing here is the concentration of power that's developed over the last 15 years.
15 years ago there were thriving independent forums for nearly everything. For whatever reason, they've mostly been abandoned or closed, and "internet forums" have been concentrated into two places: Reddit and Facebook.
Facebook is obviously nonsense when it comes to serious discussion so Reddit in a way has become the last bastion of intellectual discourse on the internet.
Google any product reviews; Reddit shows up. When they trained AI the overwhelming majority of content came from Reddit.
Reddit is now the powerhouse of the internet and being a mod is intensely more powerful today than it was 15 years ago. They get to steer the discourse for a much more concentrated internet and there's a lot of money interested in doing that steering.
Manbeardo@reddit
The concentration of power in a mod team is fragile in subreddits with long-term participants. During my time on Reddit, I’ve seen plenty of schisms and mass exoduses on subreddits that I’ve participated in. The powers of bad moderators are checked by the ease with which the community can move to a new subreddit.
For most of Reddit, that keeps mods accountable to their communities. For subreddits like /r/codingbootcamp where a large share of the posts come from people who are visiting the sub for the first time, that model falls apart.
Royal-Ninja@reddit
The truth is that forum moderation is a difficult, thankless job that attracts assholes who want to control discussion and power trip. This has been true for as long as internet forums have existed.
Nicksaurus@reddit
12 years here. I remember some early drama involving a neo-nazi (u/soccer) who got control of several large subreddits (including, weirdly, r/xkcd) and used them to push holocaust denial and men's rights/redpill stuff for years
The only difference now is that the site is far more popular so posts here reach much further across the internet
stumblinbear@reddit
Close to 13 years, here. Yep. Same shit, different year.
sje46@reddit
It is pretty frustrating and annoying how readily all reddit moderators just lock threads.
I knew it was a mistake when reddit introduced it as a feature. It was slightly controversial the first few times I saw it used. Now it's used by almost all large subreddits on a very regular basis. "We're too lazy to actually review everything so we'll just prevent people about talking about this thing".
Now they all hide behind bot accounts, and they will often ban accounts that ask why they were banned. They also default towards permabans. Personally, I think the VAST majority of offenses should be temp bans. Ban someone for a week, a month, a couple years even. But no, they're too lazy to even do that.
When I was an active mod I would tell my mod team to only do temp bans and to put a fucking ban message linking the offensive comment so it could be reviewed. They neglected to do so.
The system is all so incredibly stupid, and the fact that users react so negatively to being moderated, which is a natural human reaction, just leads to the few good mods becoming increasingly cynical and negative, so they become bad mods.
Probably the solution to this is to abandon large websites, as moderating thousands of people in a way that makes the community usable, while also being fair, is probably just outright impossible.
Discord moderators of communities with like 30 people don't raelly have this much trouble.
drislands@reddit
I'm starting to see mods use the Auto mod to remove posts that include certain words, too. Where once there would be a fleet of users smugly pointing out "you can say gun on the internet", you instead see posts with heaps of words self-censored and apparently they are correct to do so.
Agent_03@reddit
Never ascribe to malice what can be explained by the incompetence. Regexes are hard to write well. Most mods are bad at writing Automod rules and fall back to the simple but not very useful ones.
They would rather ignore (or manually approve) a bunch of automod mistakes than fix the rule.
Source: I used to be a somewhat active mod in a big community. Among other things, I saw this problem firsthand (and put in a lot of effort fixing it).
SanityInAnarchy@reddit
Yeah, this one bothers me. A mod wakes up in a bad mood one day, or just hates you personally for some reason, or you legitimately make one mistake, and you're cut off from that community forever.
Sure, you can make a new account... but if you go back to somewhere you've been permabanned from under a new account, that's ban evasion and against the ToS. If Reddit finds out, you risk a site-wide ban.
Are there things you could do that are bad enough to justify this? Probably. But... I mean, I got permabanned from r/comics for one post about why I didn't like a certain comic. I was out of line (there is a rule about not complaining about comics you don't like), but after hanging out there for years, it took one bad day and I'm gone forever. Fortunately, I'm not actually a comic artist myself, otherwise I imagine this kind of thing could be career-ending! But if my experience is typical... does that actually lead to a better community than a temp ban?
There's another thing that bothers me lately: Reddit will now ban entire subreddits for being "unmoderated." So if you moderate too lightly for Reddit's tastes, that's what you're risking. That's on top of the possibility of a new mod evicting an existing mod for inactivity. So there's an incentive to be active and heavy-handed, and then to use automation to save time. And the automation tools are terrible.
Then there's this part that the OP article highlights:
Makes a certain amount of sense: You're not allowed to bribe a mod.
But this also means: Modding is a significant time commitment (see above rules about 'inactive' mods or 'unmoderated' communities), that must be done on a purely-volunteer basis. Reddit is worth $37 billion, but you must volunteer, it's against the rules for you to get paid for your time.
And this is why I will not tell you about the best-moderated subs I know of, because they all have like 50 or 100 people in them.
HasGreatVocabulary@reddit
r/singularity mods don't allow noncherrypicked results such as nanobanana's generation of human organ layouts,
r/aivideo mods do not allow any anti-AI talk (labelled a sora future use case test i uploaded as hate, banned me, muted me etc fine i post on my profile now)
r/wallstreetbets mods don't allow certain tickers to be discussed, usually the ones competing with elom (asts would have been on a lot more people's radars if they didn't, but that's just one example)
r/statistics mods don't allow any discussions on election statistics or voting anomalies
these days, as soon as any post starts getting a bit "rebellious" re the trump admin, it gets removed by mods, , and so on
this is just within my sphere of interests, not even getting into how worldnews and pics censors discussions
matthieum@reddit
As a moderator, I can definitely understand why.
Sometimes it's not so much about what you (don't) want, and more about what you can reasonably moderate. Contentious topics have a tendency to bring the worst out of everyone, and suddenly you're having dozens of parallel conversions where people start insulting and threatening each others and you just can't keep up.
Worse, "hot" (contested) topics such as those tend to be surfaced by Reddit, so you see random redditors -- not aware of the sub norms -- popping by and fanning the flames.
It's a nightmare.
I wish for better tooling:
But there's no such tooling, and I only have finite free time to allocate to moderation, so I use the only hammers that I have at my disposal, the coarse-grained ones. And I don't like it. And the users don't like it. sigh
fire_in_the_theater@reddit
i wish u'd give up on trying to control the speech of others.
it's just words on a screen, it's not actually a nightmare
kewlness@reddit
As a recovering moderator, people rail against censorship or controlling speech, but the truth is actually quite different. By avoiding "hot button" topics such as blatant racism, conspiracy theories, or even echo chamber ideas formed in social media.
I didn't mind controversial posts. I didn't mind dissenting opinions. But posts which were clearly intended to inflame passions and create drama were removed in keeping with the subreddit's rules. I don't know what the moderation landscape looks like currently, but back then the moderator who removed a post didn't handle the appeal - another moderator would do that and make an objective opinion based on the complaint and the content. The moderator who handled the appeal's word was final if it was decided to reverse the other moderator's removal. It was a system which worked and quite effectively.
Moderating is hard work without any form of payment from Reddit. You are trying to foster discussions which means you need the pro/contra aspect - if everybody agrees then there isn't much of a discussion. By avoiding drama, we tended to get calm, rational discourse instead of inflamed passions. Don't even get me started on low-effort posts and bot/AI accounts...
ansible@reddit
The mods over on /r/AskEngineers are very careful and strict about anything related to the 9/11 twin towers collapse for similar reasons. Discussion is not banned, but anything less than strictly staying on topic with engineering questions regarding material strength, melting points, etc. will be shut down. Why? Conspiracy crackpots will flock over and cause trouble (which is work).
ZorbaTHut@reddit
I mean, I'll defend this one a bit; it's a community for posting AI videos and talking about AI video development, it really is off-topic to criticize the very concept of AI itself. There's plenty of more topically appropriate subreddits.
HasGreatVocabulary@reddit
fair take, but it feels like the same reason r/Conservative is nearly a pointless subreddit, since you literally cannot disagree with someone without getting banned forever, super sketchy rules meant to deliberately create an echo chamber feel wrong
https://www.reddit.com/r/aivideo/comments/1nymh5o/sora2_satirical_protest/ was why I was banned, not for anti-ai talk, but political hate speech apparently
ZorbaTHut@reddit
Not every subreddit is meant to be debate, though. Should the Tennis subreddit be full of people complaining about how much they hate tennis? I think it's completely fine for there to be subreddits for debate and subreddits for fanbases.
For what it's worth, I think if I were Emperor Of Reddit I'd make it mandatory for subreddits to declare what kind they were, and then enforce that decision; there's certainly no shortage of subreddits that claim to be for debate and then don't allow it. But I'd still allow both.
But, credit to /r/conservative:
they're quite unambiguous about that; it isn't a place for debate about whether conservatives are right, it's a place for conservatives to discuss things. I don't have an issue with this.
C'mon man. Straight from the ban message:
This is obviously a politics video. This isn't even an edge case, they explicitly say "don't post politics" and you went and posted pure politics.
We don't have to debate whether it counts as hate speech because it doesn't matter, it's still politics, and this outcome should not come as a surprise.
HasGreatVocabulary@reddit
That's what that point here is, considering the blog above as well. A small number of mods/ or maybe even one, can affect what millions see and hear and maybe in a tiny way, how they think about a given subject.
ZorbaTHut@reddit
Well, okay, but not having those decisions made is also influencing a lot of people. There isn't an option here where people aren't influenced.
The example above is a situation where a malicious actor took over an existing community and changed its purpose. I'm not okay with that. But I'm okay with communities having a purpose.
cyanight7@reddit
r/hasan_piker is currently going through a huge controversy but you won’t find much truthful info on that subreddit about it
cholantesh@reddit
Parasocial lunatics being upset with other parasocial lunatics about the object of their parasocial lunacy is not what most normal people would regard as a '''huge controversy'''.
cyanight7@reddit
I never really gave a shit about Hasan before this, but he's been shocking his dog to sit properly in the background of his stream... it's absolutely ridiculous.
It's also the second highest upvoted post of all time in r/LivestreamFail with over 75k upvotes, so while maybe that whole subreddit is just "parasocial lunatics", it seems like a pretty big controversy to me.
cholantesh@reddit
For the love of God, go outside.
angriest_man_alive@reddit
Weirdly aggressive comment when someone explains to you why a controversy is a controversy. Just because you dont exist in the space or culture doesnt mean its not controversial
cholantesh@reddit
It's not a satisfactory explanation to anyone who isn't in a pathologically online bubble.
angriest_man_alive@reddit
Knowing big events going on with some of the most popular streamers on twitch does not make someone pathologically online…
Thats like calling someone a movie watching basement dweller for knowing that leonardo dicaprio only dates young women
cyanight7@reddit
You got me there!
kormer@reddit
I don't know why people care about that dog so much.
Kaya on the other hand is totes adorbs.
cyanight7@reddit
You had me in the first half ⚡️⚡️
Incorrect_Oymoron@reddit
ASTS is constantly talked about on WSB, and wsb users love to mock Elon's stupid decisions
HasGreatVocabulary@reddit
I'm talk about a year ago when it was at a low price
Incorrect_Oymoron@reddit
I'm guessing when it was below the minimum 1.0b market cap?
You were basically breaking the 'no pump and dump' rule. Saying "Hey guys, check out how great this penny stock is" is a prohibited comment on WSB
HasGreatVocabulary@reddit
I don't think it below wsb requirements example of removed DD but like I said, it's just one example, im not out here trying to reform wsb
valarauca14@reddit
reminder: the city with the most reddit user's the US Airforce base where they conduct psyops from :D
mrwizard420@reddit
r/analog claimed that they were going to lock comments on photos containing nudity, but photographers were still welcome to share them. Now, anything even remotely suggestive gets instantly locked with no discussion.
makotech222@reddit
Reddit use to proudly host child porn, jailbait, etc lol. Reddit currently is still evil, just a different kind of evil
Paradox@reddit
Reddit didn't host images or videos till the latter half of the 2010s. All reddit had was text posts and link posts
sje46@reddit
reddit didn't host child porn. The fact that you put it in a list with jailbait means you are distinguishing the two. There was a jailbait subreddit which was allowed because it WAS legal. Disgusting, but legal. Not saying it should have been allowed. But Reddit 100% did not "proudly" host pictures of children having sex.
I'm sure it's been posted on obscure subreddits, and those subreddits and all associated accounts immediately banned when admins found out.
reddit admins used to be very libertarian with things, yeah, it was kinda gross. They had the sexualizing-teenager subreddits, and also things like cruelly bullying fat people, doxxing, white nationalist bullshit. I'm glad those things are gone.
makotech222@reddit
Thanks bro
NenAlienGeenKonijn@reddit
Man you're disgusting.
Oh, it IS a lot easier to argue against made up quotes. I understand why you are doing it.
sje46@reddit
Of course I knew you were going to write something as fucking stupid as that. I literally said it was disgusting and it should have been banned, but you ignored that, because you're an asshole.
You were the one who distinguished between child porn and jailbait. Which if anything would mark you as the pedophile lmao.
I am saying if you're not including jailbait as a subset of cp, (which is how the law looks at it) then reddit never hosted child porn.
ionixsys@reddit
There is a particular subreddit for people who have served in the US military that deletes any mention of staff firings at a specific US agency designed to assist them. Similarly, when an African American Medal of Honor recipient had his memorial page taken down by the US government, with the comment "DEI," a post complaining about that was also deleted because it was "political".
Oxyfire@reddit
Hot take, sometimes freedom of discussion is just someone wanting to argue in bad faith.
Not saying there aren't bad mods and bad subs, but I've seen just as many examples of people essentially complaining they can't troll or post in bad faith in a sub that clearly is trying to curb that sort of thing. A reply mentions the statistics subreddit not allowing political or polling stats, and franky that just seems like it's going to save people a lot of headaches and slapfights. They also point out an aivideo subreddit not allowing anti-ai stuff and like, as much as I hate AI that seems perfectly reasonable given the only reason someone is going to be anti-AI there is to pick a fight.
Reddit seems like it's somewhat intended for anyone to be able to go set up a new subreddit - one could just go make "political statistics" - though I do recognize there is some issues when a certain sub is seen as the "main" or you have an issue where one gets taken over by a moderator who makes a big shift in moderation style.
Guinness@reddit
It’s worse than that. Many subreddits pre-emptively ban you just for commenting in a subreddit they don’t like. Which is something that started from /r/shitredditsays
DirkTheGamer@reddit
This is exactly why Reddit needs to have a moderator review program. I would honestly pay $50 just to have an employee of Reddit review an abuse claim because some of them are such power hungry assholes that get off on abusing people.
milahu2@reddit
no, we need a peer-to-peer publishing network, where every post is mirrored to multiple publishers, so when a publisher (reddit moderator) decides to remove a post, that post is still visible from other publishers. like a peer-to-peer web archive, taking snapshots in real time. this would also need a generic voting and tagging system, so every user can also vote on his trust to other users, on a spectrum between +100 and -100. see also my p2p-killerapp. this could be called "neverforgetnet" because "the internet does not forget".
DirkTheGamer@reddit
Hey! I like that more. That’s how Bluesky works right?
milahu2@reddit
no, bluesky is not a peer-to-peer network, bluesky is just another centralized clearnet service with all the censorship we know and hate. bluesky is a twitter for leftists. actual solutions would look more like zeronet, secure-scuttlebutt, NOSTR, ...
DirkTheGamer@reddit
Thanks I appreciate the education. I’m gonna dig into this. Just to understand how it works if nothing else..
milahu2@reddit
the next problem is, as soon as a "p2p-killerapp" becomes too successful (too large), they will pull the plug of the internet, and then we would have to fallback to peer-to-peer transport layers like LoRa (RNode, Reticulum). because tyrants (control freaks) hate it when too many of their slaves escape their tyranny...
DirkTheGamer@reddit
I believe it…
gimpwiz@reddit
Reputation systems are not new on forums (they predate a lot of folk posting here), and they're generally pretty good, but they do enforce a group-think to a lesser or greater extent. Or a circlejerk if you're less lucky. The more people... the bigger the manipulation into circlejerk.
upside_win222@reddit
When I think mods I think some squatter with an agenda who got the subreddit first. There are no easy tools for us normal people to protest mod abuse. You see a lot of mods pushing their own agendas on niche subreddits and city specific subreddits.
DirkTheGamer@reddit
Yeah I got banned from one of my favourite subreddits for accidentally violating one of the rules that was like “Rule 12C” and I missed the C part when reading. I tried to apologize and say I would never do it again and knew the rules and their response was just “I don’t believe you’re sorry” and I’m almost positive they looked at my post and comment history and just decided they didn’t like me for some reason and decided to bully me with the power they have. Or even worse, they do it just cause they enjoy bullying people and there was nothing I could have done to possibly appease them.
BroBroMate@reddit
This is why good tech subs ensure that there's a mix of active mods.
I'm a mod (under another account) of a sub based around a FOSS tech, and our current make-up is 2 very experienced devs who work for the main player ($COMPANY) in that space, 1 very experienced dev who used to work for the $COMPANY and wouldn't piss on the CEO of that company if he was on fire, and me, who has used the tech since early days, used to work for a competitor of $COMPANY for a bit and only feels slightly miffed that $COMPANY never tried to headhunt me.
We allow people from $COMPANY to post and comment, and we allow people from their competitors to post and comment, but we do require you to be straight up and flair people to mark which company in this space they work for when posting content, so you know the bias upfront.
rabbitlion@reddit
I read all 10 parts of his response and he does make some very good points that make this seem much less one-sided.
beyphy@reddit
The biggest issue with bootcamps is that there wasn't any type of credentialing or uniform standard. Without that, bootcamps basically worked on a system of trust with employers. Any company could call themselves a bootcamp with large potential differences in quality between two bootcamps. And some (many?) bootcamps abused that system of trust. And that ultimately led to the downfall of the industry since employers weren't able to trust their graduates.
If bootcamp founders are upset about that, they have no one to blame but themselves for themselves for their lack of regulation.
International_Cell_3@reddit
There was a hot minute 10ish years ago where bootcamps were helping career transition people into tech at the height of ZIRP and you couldn't get devs in front of keyboards fast enough, and a few (for lack of a better word) "good" bootcamps were doing great work.
About 5 years ago, right before the pandemic, I saw things start to change. To the point where I've worked at multiple companies where "bootcamp grad with no experience" is insta ignored. When I saw one top comment was a calling it a waste of money I was like, "did I write that?"
Anyway there is a system of certified programs for training developers. It's called a bachelor's degree from an accredited university.
21Rollie@reddit
Really what killed it is the same things that killed hiring more broadly in tech. The end of free money during the pandemic, a long recovery, and then the AI boom after that. The bootcamps were viable in the small period of time where growth was massive, cheap, and needed manpower. Still needs manpower now but everybody thinks they’ll be left holding the bag when AI has the Big Breakthrough that’ll make white collar people obsolete, so they don’t want to hire.
Godd2@reddit
Codesmith didn't offer interview prep? I thought they were boasting a 70% acceptance rate of their students getting jobs in tech. Surely part of the program was to help them get the job as well.
Mo3@reddit
You should see the astroturfing and botting they were doing. Literally running LLM bots spamming and engaging in arguments with other users. I think you can still find instances if you search for Codesmith
21Rollie@reddit
I was gonna say you can tell I’m not a bot because of the age of my account… but people sell their old accounts on the cheap these days. Yall should look up utilities to delete your old comments and posts, I do that periodically so less of my data is used to train LLMs. Those fuckers can end up in their own feedback loop fuck em
ellusion@reddit
Yeah it's a super one sided article and doesn't pretend to be anything other than a hit piece. It exaggerates a lot but I don't think it's unfair to say that Novati's involvement bordered on obsession. Personally I think the truth is in the middle somewhere. I think CodeSmith was both a "good" boot camp but also had a lot of questionable practices.
My friend attended the in person one (on my recommendation looking at research). The good is that they did have good placement rates, they have a great pre-bootcamp program and screening process, they teach the right things, and they offer the hours.
The bad is the actual boot camp process was very hands off it sounds like. Like not even being able to get help when it was needed. I appreciate that to some degree but I think if you're hard stuck it seems like that should be an available option. They encourage you to embellish your resume aggressively and not even apply for junior positions out the gate, pretty much senior only. The beginning is grueling and they try to get people to drop at the first partial refund checkpoint since those people don't get included in the final numbers.
Granted this got my roommate a job (1 of 3 people who did) as a founding engineer at a 1 person startup but was completely out of his depth needing to code but also handle DevOps and learn python.
I think there are things worth criticizing and since it's Novati's industry, hes very vocal about it. I would roll my eyes when I'd see his posts under every single post. I get it, but it's a very overwhelming and stifling presence.
gimpwiz@reddit
So he started a company?
Mo3@reddit
Lol, senior positions. I've never even seen a boot camp graduate colleague in any position in 15+ years of my professional career.
I don't doubt it happens, but I doubt that in many instances a bootcamp was really necessary for it. Autodidacts aren't anything new, I'm one myself, sounds like those bootcamps are really just pushing people into autodidactic learning. Not to say that's necessarily bad, just... probably not even necessary for most people.
Happy_Junket_9540@reddit (OP)
I promise you I am not a bot. Maybe it looks like it because my generic user handle. No idea how to prove it to you.. i suppose you can lurk my profile and judge for yourswlf 🤷♂️
Smurph269@reddit
It's not you, but there are posts in the linked thread from accounts who have never really posted on reddit before. It's a tell tale sign of a bot account.
Mo3@reddit
Oh no, sorry. I didn't call you a bot. That open ended question is just one of the things that they also sometimes use
Happy_Junket_9540@reddit (OP)
Ah right, gotcha. Thats a fair question.
Which-World-6533@reddit
Given that political parties are suspected for paying for Reddit, etc post (https://www.declassifieduk.org/journalists-secretly-offered-cash-for-social-media-posts/) I would think a lot of Reddit is artificial these days.
Mo3@reddit
Well personally I believe it's 90+% or something at this point in the bigger subs. It was already present 10 years ago. The more you look the more you find.
/r/TheseFuckingAccounts/
Which-World-6533@reddit
TBH conspiracy theorists are increasingly being proven right.
enlguy7@reddit
Too long and nauseating to read, but not surprising that the asshole who did this made friends with Zuckerberg. Also not overly surprising he made friends with Zuckerberg by being a lying piece of shit. It's basically the longest article ever about sociopaths. Also, how was that guy not sued into oblivion for all the fraud and libel??? And apparently he is STILL trying to pull manipulations on reddit, there was a poll in the codingbootcamp sub about removing him as a mod, and of course he stickied some BS marketing crap to the top, and started downvoting anyone with a soul. It's people like that who make me wish Russia would just nuke the U.S., or at the very least Silicon Valley. I do not even understand how people like that can exist. Was he ass raped every day in childhood? What makes someone such a SHITTY human being??
gimpwiz@reddit
I live in silicon valley, raising kids here, but thanks for your thought.
asurarusa@reddit
Omg that post was wild. I feel so bad for will. I never interacted with code smith, but I did take some of the live courses he’s done for Frontend masters and he’s an amazing teacher.
It sucks that someone who is good at teaching and in the boot camp game for the right reasons got run off my a psycho.
Low_Impact_8368@reddit
Bir Reddit moderatörü, 23.5 milyon dolarlık bir bootcamp’i nasıl çökertti? (Ve neden hepimiz endişelenmeliyiz)
Son haftalarda dönen “Codesmith” hikayesini duymuşsunuzdur.
Bir rakip bootcamp’in kurucusu, aynı zamanda r/codingbootcamp moderatörüymüş.
Ve bu kişi, moderatörlük gücünü kullanarak rakip şirketi itibarsızlaştırmış.
Bazı olumlu içerikler bastırılmış, bazı olumsuz yorumlar öne çıkarılmış.
Sonuç? 23,5 milyon dolarlık bir eğitim kampı fiilen çöktü.
Ama burada asıl hikâye Codesmith değil.
Asıl hikâye: internetin nasıl kolay manipüle edilebildiği.
BlueGoliath@reddit
What do you expect anyone to say? Reddit's admins don't give a damn about subreddit mods abusing their positions. It's been like this forever and will never change.
SanityInAnarchy@reddit
It's been like this forever, but Reddit hasn't always been as important as it is now. That's something the article covers: You could always maybe squeeze some SEO out of Reddit, but as the Open Web dies, and as Reddit becomes some of the most bizarrely-trusted input for LLMs, the impact of that moderation is far worse than it used to be.
jexmex@reddit
Which also proves the point that LLMs is where the world goes to die. People that rely on them will just be more ignorant for the pleasure. Companies that do will just eventually deal with what that ends up costing them int the end.
PeterNorthSolo@reddit
They got a heavy hand in government and corporate politics. They let rules slide unless it goes against their agenda, and then they just use it as an excuse to silence people.
bannedfrom_argo@reddit
Michael Novati is no longer listed as a mod on r/codingbootcamp
That was quick, but I don't know enough about being a mod to know if it is permanent.
Mysterious-Rent7233@reddit
https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1o3owhx/im_no_longer_going_to_be_a_moderator_for_now_my/
ToaruBaka@reddit
Honestly the "for now" is enough to prove he doesn't feel any remorse for what he did. Blatant abuser of power is reluctant to let it go. Shocker.
b0w3n@reddit
The amount of folks going to bat for the dude on that subreddit is wild.
Even if he wasn't directly responsible for their losses, the weird gish galloping he's doing (seriously, a sex cult?) coupled with the nepotism email nonsense should have been enough to call his impartiality into question.
ToaruBaka@reddit
Yeah it's legitimately unhinged behavior.
thatguydr@reddit
So all the other mods aren't just backup accounts or his friends, then?
this_knee@reddit
Ugh. Watch The Primagen’s reading of this.
cooljacob204sfw@reddit
Why would I want to spend time watching a somewhat obnoxious coding "influencer"?
Paradox@reddit
You don't want to get 3 paragraphs of information in a 45 minute long video with 4 ad-breaks and a sponsor shout-out? Why?
cake-day-on-feb-29@reddit
Younger populations seem obsessed with sitting in front of a screen watching 10 minutes of someone rehashing the same shit 7 times instead of just reading some words....
homerj@reddit
Everyone with power, abuses it. Everyone.
Oborr@reddit
I've been in a particular industry for 25 years and constantly see all levels of this on Reddit every day.
Sometimes there will be constant comments in threads about particular brands being great when I know from experience they are absolutely the worst products on the market. Then there are the extremes like in the article.
I used to call out this nonsense a lot, but then dealing with their army of shill accounts got too much for me to bother. Do your own research instead by engaging actual qualified tradespeople and experts in a field and don't just trust the stuff you read online.
shevy-java@reddit
Moderators can be evil.
sopunny@reddit
So this went on for "years" and then when the industry we a whole is at a downturn, that's when they finally get affected? How effective was the mod abuse actually?
WeAreSven@reddit
I actually went back in late 2016. I am one of those who actually did not get a relevant job after finishing (you have to take a midterm and final exam to even continue, so I was on par with the technical knowledge). I do not blame Codesmith for this and had issues of my own to sort out unfortunately that made getting a job in this field much more difficult, such as not being able to financially afford taking a junior developer role that I was basically being forced into due to lack of a better resume background than that of my peers.
That being said, we learned TONS. And we genuinely learned it. There were times I was frustrated in class because of teachers trying not to spoon-feed us answers, but eventually once more things clicked, I had a better foundational level of what was taking place. The curriculum itself was interesting and felt like it was always evolving to prepare us for industry-leading shifts. Does all of this compensate for actually working for a big company or having a degree? No, but I'm finally working on a CS degree now because I'm tired of laboring and most of the technical knowledge and paradigms that aren't just rote memorization of acronyms I STILL remember most of from class.
If I were to knock it at all, it would be that they could have used some more seasoned staff on location to help students, especially with how to navigate into the industry. For the revenue they were generating at the time it was a bit odd that most of the staff there were students from previous cohorts. But I also believe the CEO, Will, was having VISA issues at the time and was mostly stuck in the UK. That all being said, most any of the other negatives I've seen brought up by the article seem blown way out of proportion. A sex cult? Like how does that even get brought up in relation to a bootcamp? Sure Will was a hell of a speaker and bit of a hype guy, but he was also trying to affirm people's confidence going in to interviews when many are feeling imposter syndrome, but he isn't trying to talk people into anything other than learning and getting a job from what I saw.
TLDR; I learned a shitton and met great people, but personal circumstances kept me from leveraging bootcamp to get into the industry. Despite some flaws with the class, I do not blame Codesmith for my outcome and most of this Novati guys attacks seem like a personal vendetta.
Happy_Junket_9540@reddit (OP)
Thanks for sharing.
DrQuailMan@reddit
How old was the "kid"? Old enough to have a linkedin. Regardless of whether there's any wrongdoing, adults are fair targets for criticism, and familial relationships are prone to conflicts of interest. This isn't a valid complaint unless the "kid" is under 18, and even that is only enough to restrict criticism to the parent.
I might read the rest, but don't get apoplectic over concepts that are only loosely associated with problematic behavior, maybe?
allwordsaremadeup@reddit
Mods are the weakness of reddit. Default frontpage subreddit r/worldnews is run by zionists in the midst of a genocide and there's nothing you can do...
cake-day-on-feb-29@reddit
News: "terrorist guns down innocent civilians, praises hitler"
You:
Is genocide where you attack people of a certain ethnicity, or is it where you repeatedly try to make peace?
And of course the "Zionist" dog-whistle, ever present on reddit shitlibbery...
allwordsaremadeup@reddit
What? You're saying strange things.
Are you asking for definitions?
Terrorism is asymmetrical ideological violence. There's not a lot of you, but through violence, you can use terror, an emotion you hope to instill in your target population, as a lever and influence a lot. 9/11 was 60-80 ppl and they have steered world history for the last 25 years.
Oct 7 was a massive attack, but since they did not have any real chance at conquering Israel, and we must assume the goals were still to have violence to act as a lever. So, still terrorism.
Terrorism is perpetrated by the underdog, the least powerful side in a conflict. It's a consequence of the definition.
Genocide is the crime of removing an entire people. Moving, killing, dispersing, reeducating, or some combination thereof.
It's a significant logistical endeavor, so in all historical examples, the perpetrators are the most powerful side in a conflict.
So they kind of exclude each other. Terrorists cannot be genocide perpetrators. A terrorist and a member of a genocidal regime might be saying the same thing, wish oblivion upon the other side, but the terrorist just doesn't have the means to do that; he can only do it by proxy, and the genocidal regime member does have the means to do it, that's the difference.
dnbxna@reddit
/r/WorldPolitics devolved into actual anime titties. That's why we get our world news from r/anime_titties
SnugglyCoderGuy@reddit
We live in a society
Theemuts@reddit
Time to paint a target on my back!
I'm glad there are still some subreddits where it's okay to have more nuanced opinions than Israel bad. It's a complex conflict that has been going on for decades, and both the Israeli government and Hamas are awful. Not every subreddit has to be like /r/conservative where you're only allowed to post if you pass their purity laws.
rolim91@reddit
That’s true. It was really sudden too. It’s like it suddenly pushed all of this stuff in that subreddit.
dnbxna@reddit
And for a time everyone got their world news from r/animetitties
KevinCarbonara@reddit
Reddit should be required to vet mods. They should have had that requirement since the beginning.
I remember when mods were protesting reddit API changes by shuttering individual reddits. You had mods that were trying to move "their" communities to a different site because they honestly thought that they were in control of the community. They all failed, of course. And despite many claiming they deserved money for being mods, once reddit said they'd be forcibly reopening reddits with new mods, the old mods decided they'd rather keep "working" for free than let anyone else do it instead.
xmBQWugdxjaA@reddit
The effect on the LLMs is scary.
Ringbailwanton@reddit
Whatever’s going on, one of my biggest takeaways is that the reliance of LLMs on Reddit for content and context is pretty troubling.
RickJWagner@reddit
Goes to show how reliable Reddit is.
witness_smile@reddit
This guy apparently spent 12 years at Facebook and was friends with Zuckerberg. Checks out that he is a manipulative piece of shit.
multijoy@reddit
lol. No, it’s because posters like you want free reign to be massive racists.
seven_seacat@reddit
Holy cow.
Kyriios188@reddit
That was depressing to read, hope he can sue