In a recent post, I talked about a dark practice that Reddit uses to funnel people to install their app.

This is also a post criticizing Reddit, but not the people who make and run Reddit, but subreddits and their moderators.

It’s increasingly getting difficult to submit anything to a subreddit, only to get a message few seconds later, that a moderator (usually a bot) telling you that they have removed your content.

I know moderating a large subreddit can be difficult. People can spam your subreddit with unwanted content, or content that is not related to the subreddit.

However, almost all the subreddits does not give the content any chance, and just block it instantly.

Some subreddits only allow text posts, even if they have not disabled the option to submit a link, as soon as you submit a link, your content gets flagged.

I have seen some situations where including a link in a text post can instantly flag your content.

HackerNews approach

The HackerNews approach is similar to that of Reddit, you have a home page and also a place for new links to show up.

And instead of a bot deciding on the content, it’s the users that decides which content comes to the front page. They can flag the content, and sometimes the content can get removed by the moderators.

This approach where the community selects which content deserves the front page is much better than an unintelligent bot deciding what deserves to be submitted.

Even though there can be unwanted submissions or spam, if there is a reasonable community, then the community will select the best content as if it’s a natural selection.

I would counter argue, that it’s actually a smaller community that needs a moderation, not a large community. Because natural selection has proven to select the only the best. And admin oversight can be given from time to time.

Yes, I know HackNews system is not perfect, people can game the system, and there have been posts criticizing the HackerNews system when it comes to gaming the system and moderator involvement. But still I feel like it’s the best system we got.

Is it just me or has anyone else came across similar situations where you wanted to ask something on Reddit and instantly turned down by a subreddit block?