Ireland Reddit closing at night as mods try to 'stem the flow' of extreme racism

Gatling

Beasty wrote: »

We're up to account no 933k+, and only 33k or so banned.

33,000 banned would never have guessed it's that many , after nearly 14 years (for me ,) close to 1 million users would have expected that,the banned figure is mad to me

My name is URL

Figel Narage wrote: »

Irish Reddit is incredibly left wing

lol, no it's not. They had a sub header of Leo Varadker up for 3 months

Figel Narage

My name is URL wrote: »

lol, no it's not. They had a sub header of Leo Varadker up for 3 months

It is, go on it now and see what they are posting.

CrankyHaus

Figel Narage wrote: »

Irish Reddit is incredibly left wing with people who love the 'RA and dislike the U.K amongst other things and can be quite cringe as it has a lot of American esque things posted, so I presume these race comments aren't from the Irish people/regular users on it. They have no time for Gemma O'Doherty discussion or anything so I'm surprised they're having this problem

They're apparently getting inundated late at night by people who put up links to race-baiting Twitter posts, that are almost certainly fraudulent, and then link to Right Wing Subs to have them all come onto R\Ireland and flood it with their views. They call this Brigading.
This all apparently happens at peak US internet times.
By the time I look at the Sub in the morning the stuff's all gone, so it must have been knackering to address.

The Subs not as left wing as it looks on the surface. Much of the comments that aren't just slogans are reasonably balanced. They even had stuff of Leo as a superhero a couple of months back. The Me\IRA stuff gets some pushback too.

Tom Mann Centuria

Beasty wrote: »

We're up to account no 933k+, and only 33k or so banned.

The About Us section provides some headline stats, but only a fraction of the "members" number are particularly active in terms of posting. I presume we do have quite a lot of readers who never sign up, or post, resulting in all those page impressions

I'd imagine the serial reregs must account for a few thousand of the bans too?

Zaph

Tom Mann Centuria wrote: »

I'd imagine the serial reregs must account for a few thousand of the bans too?

Gordon and I banned thousands of accounts back when we used to get bombarded by spammers on a daily basis. They account for a significant portion of the 33k.

Beasty

Gatling wrote: »

33,000 banned would never have guessed it's that many , after nearly 14 years (for me ,) close to 1 million users would have expected that,the banned figure is mad to me

Used to get a lot of spammers that Gordon and Zaph dealt with

Having said that I'm at over 5k sitebans in 3 years as an Admin

Beasty

Tom Mann Centuria wrote: »

I'd imagine the serial reregs must account for a few thousand of the bans too?

I would say 95%+ of the sitebans I've done

jill_valentine

Figel Narage wrote: »

Irish Reddit is incredibly left wing with people who love the 'RA and dislike the U.K amongst other things and can be quite cringe as it has a lot of American esque things posted, so I presume these race comments aren't from the Irish people/regular users on it. They have no time for Gemma O'Doherty discussion or anything so I'm surprised they're having this problem

They were definitely imports, I was around for some of it and the posts were almost invariably posting in r/Ireland for the first time. Dip into the aul post history and if there were any other posts at all they were all US or UK subs otherwise.

Very definitely a concerted and co ordinated effort too, a full on firehose of very nasty and explicitly racist stuff all at once rather than a drip feed of Yer Da's Whatsapp kind of content.

There's been a visible change of tactics in the last day to something a bit more subtle but the stuff that prompted this wasn't any kind of grey area, epithets a go-go.

Moghead

Stephen Yamslaw Cork Knifeman wrote: »

Already banned me twice tonight. You're an animal Beasty!

Quarehawk

Guy:Incognito

irishgeo wrote: »

Your thinking of 4chan which is even more nuts than reddit.

The guy in the christchurch mosque attack was posting on it on his way to do it and being encouraged by the users wasnt he? Might have been 8chan.

Figel Narage

Guy:Incognito wrote: »

The guy in the christchurch mosque attack was posting on it on his way to do it and being encouraged by the users wasnt he? Might have been 8chan.

That was 8chan. Another level beyond 4chan. Dunno if it still operates though

My name is URL

My name is URL wrote: »

Judging by some of the ****e posted here, I wouldn't say boards is too far behind

Be it reddit or here they seem like really sad people, who if they weren't such arseholes you'd almost feel sorry for them.
Imagine being that bitter and twisted, or believing nearly every conspiracy theory going, or being so obsessed with money that you spend hours complaining and posting bile online.

My name is URL

StupidLikeAFox wrote: »

I wonder how well boards would be equipped for this sort of thing. Its a lower risk compared to the likes of Reddit but it should be on the radar for sure

Well boards have the advantage of mods (maybe just admins?) being able to see IP addresses etc, and spot dupe accounts easily enough.

Reddit mods have nothing like that afaik.

Even with that advantage though, there has been a massive increase in racial (some might say extreme) views been posted here.

I've not been active on Boards for about 3 years now, just the odd post in some smaller or specialised forums, but even I can see it.

BonnieSituation

fly_agaric wrote: »

Not a "member" but some stomach churning stuff on Reddit IMO.
Think it could bite them in the backside someday.
You could imagine a right wing-nut going postal in the US someday after being radicalised by some of the cesspits on there.
Suppose like twitter etc. they are "just a platform" as they call it, so can wash their hands.

My name is URL wrote: »

Pretty sure that has already happened a few times

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Going_postal

I love when an idiom goes full circle.

Madeleine Birchfield

My name is URL wrote: »

Well boards have the advantage of mods (maybe just admins?) being able to see IP addresses etc, and spot dupe accounts easily enough.

Reddit mods have nothing like that afaik.

Even with that advantage though, there has been a massive increase in racial (some might say extreme) views been posted here.

I've not been active on Boards for about 3 years now, just the odd post in some smaller or specialised forums, but even I can see it.

The extreme racial views are all throughout the American threads in Current Affairs and Politics.

pjohnson

Madeleine Birchfield wrote: »

The extreme racial views are all throughout the American threads in Current Affairs and Politics.

Current Affairs was set up to quarantine and contain those people away from AH.

ChelseaRentBoy

As long as they stamp down on extreme left wing views as well i don't see the problem.

SnowyMay

coinop wrote: »

I will never understand the mentality of someone who gladly works for free to make someone else rich. The amount of abuse and threats you put up with. Surely that time would be better spent paying attention to your kids or significant other. Even if you have no friends or family, invest that time in bettering yourself by focusing on your career or learning a new language. I would love an AMA with a mod to pick their brain because either they're not being honest about their compensation or there are psychological issues going on.

In fairness, without the volunteer mods here, boards wouldn’t exist. That’s a good enough reason to invest some time in modding.

sasta le

They ar

sasta le

They are so many new Irish trying to push an agenda and claim Ireland is racist.No doubt racist scumbags exist but on the whole Ireland is very openminded overall
I cant stand all these black guys here trying to gangsters does nothing for the decent black people here
Look at Ballbriggan

_Kaiser_

pjohnson wrote: »

Current Affairs was set up to quarantine and contain those people away from AH.

No, CA was set up to move an increasing amount of economic, political and current events discussions out of the supposedly "fun and lighthearted" AH forum so the users there could get back to asking each other what they had for dinner and flirting (no harm in that by the way).

There's a significant difference between people discussing and questioning the accepted/acceptable narrative on a "controversial" topic such as immigration and being "right wing" or racist which are just lazy attempts to stifle or shut down the discussions entirely.

I will say that the obsession with American politics (especially Trump), ideology and terminology (again stuff like "alt right") is frankly bizarre on an Irish forum. Despite the common language and familiarity with their culture through the TV and movies we've been watching for decades, Ireland is not a US state and does not have the same issues as that deeply divided country.

It's therefore ridiculous to me that there are numerous posters (on both "sides") who repeatedly post threads and comments with such fervour and determination that you'd think these events are happening on O'Connell Street daily.

This is not America as I've said here before. Nor can their problems be simply transposed into Irish society and politics - and indeed nor should they - but it is becoming increasingly difficult to judge how much of this is fuelled by the social media "need" to be first and validated, versus these OP's actually starting to BELIEVE some of the stuff they're copying from Twitter or Facebook.

That latter point is far more disturbing and damaging in my opinion than someone questioning (generally a lot more reasonably than those who attack them) whether our current immigration policy is either appropriate or fair.

Roger the cabin boy

Anti-English racism on r/Ireland is just fine and dandy though huh....

Roger the cabin boy

sasta le wrote: »

They are so many new Irish trying to push an agenda and claim Ireland is racist.No doubt racist scumbags exist but on the whole Ireland is very openminded overall
I cant stand all these black guys here trying to gangsters does nothing for the decent black people here
Look at Ballbriggan

In my honest opinion, and in my experience,

Once you get under the surface, Ireland is probably the most racist country i have ever been in and the Irish the most tribal.

You've a way to go yet, Most of the country is still white/European.
Once that mix begins to change, you will likely find yourselves in the same boat as every other country struggling with racial and cultural integration.

_Kaiser_

Roger the cabin boy wrote: »

Anti-English racism on r/Ireland is just fine and dandy though huh....

You see the same stuff here to a lesser extent - maybe because it's mostly corralled into a few megathreads.

We've a lot more shared/common history (yes, a lot of it bad - but from BOTH sides) and culture with our UK neighbours than we do with the USA or Europe, yet the 800 years and "de Brits" nonsense is still a regular feature. Then these same people go on about a United Ireland when it's obvious that such a thing would be a disaster in that environment.

TomTomTim

Why do people use discussion forums who don't want to discuss things? Most of this comes down to people, usually progressive types, who simply don't want any dissent. You see it on boards all the time, the same posters constantly in feedback, moaning about discussions that they don't like. I'd say this was the case with Reddit Ireland too, knowing what Redditors are like. There was probably a handful of posters dissenting which is not allowed, everyone must agree that BLM is glorious, or you're an evil Nazi.

Thelonious Monk

Figel Narage wrote: »

Irish Reddit is incredibly left wing with people who love the 'RA and dislike the U.K amongst other things and can be quite cringe as it has a lot of American esque things posted, so I presume these race comments aren't from the Irish people/regular users on it. They have no time for Gemma O'Doherty discussion or anything so I'm surprised they're having this problem

I find Irish Reddit unbearable in some ways, nearly every post is some anti-British meme made by a 14 year old or someone posts a picture of a packet of tayto someone's ma sent to them and they all go nuts over it. Or some wankathon as to how amazing our president is and his dogs.
Or United Ireland talk, must be just posts by kids with nothing better to think about. Plus you can't really have a discussion because if you disagree with the narrative you get downvoted into oblivion.
I don't know maybe I'm just too old for it.

JRant

Roger the cabin boy wrote: »

In my honest opinion, and in my experience,

Once you get under the surface, Ireland is probably the most racist country i have ever been in and the Irish the most tribal.

You've a way to go yet, Most of the country is still white/European.
Once that mix begins to change, you will likely find yourselves in the same boat as every other country struggling with racial and cultural integration.

How many countries have you been in?

I've traveled a fair bit and lived in Asia and Australia and I can say with a great degree of certainty we are not one of the most racist countries. Tribal, absolutely, just look at people who move "down the country" and after a couple of generations are still called blow-ins

There are a lot of countries where foreigners can't own property or become citizens. What we have in Ireland are teething problems but we don't seem to have learned anything from the likes of France or Britain where they've had huge racial issues for decades now.

TomTomTim

If anyone is looking to verify these claims, simply look for threads where you'd expect to find said comments, and use this https://github.com/JubbeArt/removeddit. It will show all the deleted comments. I'll put money on it that this is a greatly exaggerated story.

Thelonious Monk

JRant wrote: »

How many countries have you been in?

I've traveled a fair bit and lived in Asia and Australia and I can say with a great degree of certainty we are not one of the most racist countries. Tribal, absolutely, just look at people who move "down the country" and after a couple of generations are still called blow-ins

There are a lot of countries where foreigners can't own property or become citizens. What we have in Ireland are teething problems but we don't seem to have learned anything from the likes of France or Britain where they've had huge racial issues for decades now.

I've said it here before, but Ireland is the only country I've been to where I've seen racist abuse hurled at people on the street, loads of times. It has usually absolute scumbags, or kids taunting security guards with racial slurs. Or some taxi driver, but they don't seem to be as bad these days. I even have friends from when I was a kid who are losing their sh*t right now over this BLM stuff and that stabbing, and these fake texts about gangs of black kids going around - I mean one of the whatsapp groups just had n*gger this n*gger that, old friends of mine from when I was a kid, and I actually had to leave the room because I couldn't believe how f*cking stupid they were.
I didn't encounter racism while living in London for years, no doubt it happens but never actually witnessed anything like I have here, for the most part it's a massive mix of cultures that mostly get along well.