People keep saying that the firing had nothing to do with the preceding, horrible Jesse Jackson AMA that was ever so celebrated by conservatives. However, I’m really not so sure.
Either way, I say let the AMA mods and admins BURN…
Yeah, this was the top-voted AMA question for Jesse Jackson the day before: (emphasis mine)
Mr. Jackson,
You are an immoral, hate-filled race baiter that has figured out how to manipulate the political system for your own gain. You’ve personally set back race relations year after year and continue to do more harm than good. Extorting money from companies to line your pockets and threatening to bus in protestors and create a fake racial controversy if they don’t agree to pay you off is NOT civil rights activism. My question is simple; how is your relationship with the illegitimate child you fathered in 1998 while cheating on your wife? Bonus question: How much money have you extorted from various people and companies over the years of practicing your shakedown scheme? Do you think Al Capone would be jealous of your business model if he were still alive?
That Jesse Jackson AMA didn’t surprise me and it’s very telling who is doing the brigading and who is not on Reddit. It’s obvious that, for the most part, conservatives and/or racists are brigading the shit out of AMAs while progressives are mostly trying to play fair. Reminds me of all the scummy Republican gerrymandering that’s going on in voting districts around this nation.
Anyway, as soon as I saw Jackson’s AMA pop up, I figured Stormfront and all the other racist scumbags of the Internet would upvote brigade the hell out of attacks (in the form of questions) like they’ve obviously done with so many other racially charged topics, comments and AMA “questions” in the past on Reddit.
I think it’s fair to say that the AMAs on Reddit are very broken and incredibly susceptible to inequitable brigading — and I think it’s a damn shame nothing had been done to mitigate it. Or, if there has been anything done, it sure as hell was a miserable effort that resulted in failure.
The powerful (and/or perhaps the conniving and corrupt) have a hefty advantage over those who may attempt to play fair and/or are powerless to drum up social media support for their own AMAs.
Mike Rowe’s last AMA received nothing but fawning, softball questions floated to the top despite his very public and controversial conservative/libertarian viewpoints. I expected at least a few challenging questions, but nope. Fortunately for Rowe, there aren’t a bunch of progressives that organize at off-site forums to brigade attacks against him.
Meanwhile, anyone who didn’t pander to Rowe had their questions downvoted into oblivion and went unanswered (of course). It was a great public relations vehicle for Mike Rowe and not much more.
It was probably very helpful that Mike Rowe (and/or his handlers) knew to stir up his base by letting all his fans on Facebook, Twitter, etc. know well in advance that he was going to be on the AMA beforehand — and he specifically asked his fans to come and ask questions via his social media accounts.
If anyone else did that for their little posts on Reddit, they’d be banned for brigading. Why is that practice OK for AMAs, then?
Granted, people of all political stripes have done what Mike Rowe did and promote their AMA beforehand, but I find it interesting how often those with a conservative viewpoint get a pass while those with a progressive slant get slaughtered with massively upvoted attacks in the form of questions.
With all that in mind…
What about those who have an AMA that may not think it’s ethical to promote softball questions by stirring up a social media fan brigade beforehand? Is it fair that they get bombarded with vile attacks rocketed to the top of their AMA?
How about people who aren’t social media savvy enough to know how to stir up a fan brigade before their AMA? Why should they get subjected to attacks while someone like Mike Rowe, for example, gets a pass?
Or, more importantly, how about people that aren’t powerful or popular enough (or unethical enough) to brigade their own AMA, but have powerful adversaries that do?
A civil rights activist that’s not well-known will get bombarded by top-voted attacks (in the form of questions) by a hostile brigade, for example. The activist just says screw it and leaves the AMA disheartened. I’ve seen similar to this happen multiple times. This Jackson AMA was just a lot more high profile.
I’ve seen Reddit AMAs go bad for good people. Meanwhile, I’ve seen AMAs act as fantastic public relations for those that know how to game the system.
I don’t pretend to know whose fault at Reddit the shitty AMA situation is, but I have to say I’m happy to see attention being brought to the problem.
I’ve despised that sub for a long time now and I resent the people who’ve worked at that sub who enabled (or sat complacently) while obvious brigading made it a great place for scumbags to pretend to represent all of Reddit and shout down good people that simply asked the public to field them some questions.
How to fix AMAs?
I think the AMAs should be restructured to have new and single-purpose accounts to have less voting power than older, established accounts. Or, even better… no voting allowed at all from single-purpose accounts, etc.
I would also love to see AMAs have transparent voting so we can all see who is voting up questions attacks like “You are an immoral, hate-filled race baiter…” to Jesse Jackson, etc. — Let’s see how truly “grassroots” that kind of upvoting really is.
Let everyone (new accounts and old) ask questions in AMAs, but don’t allow an influx of new and single-purpose accounts with very few comments to skew the voting on Reddit AMAs and artificially promote questions attacks that are meant to cause nothing but harm and push ulterior motives instead of enlightenment.
Kind of strange that progressives organically upvote a lot of content on Reddit yet they don’t seem to be able to stop the massive tide of upvotes for attack questions on Reddit AMAs against Jesse Jackson, for example.
Seems strange that we keep seeing time and time again where racially charged topics that attempt to put minorities in a bad light get a sudden, massive inflow of votes on Reddit.
Perhaps the people who brigade like this have played their hand too many times now and people are starting to notice?
It’s just a bit of history repeating…
They helped to kill discourse on Digg and made it a vile place. Digg responded by changing their format in stupid ways instead of getting to the source of the problem …and the rest was history.
