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Censorship enforced by mods

Banan911 said:
Over the years I’ve experienced my fair share of weird moderation in this forum and it seems I’m not the only one judging from trustpilot reviews. Especially two moderators constantly pops up in reviews.

Bad reviews - trustpilot.com

Hence I’m also afraid this will be deleted but at least it then proves my point.

What is your experience?
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Interesting. I read every review on that site. I’ve been here since 2012.

Macrumors used to be a place where I could go and enjoy my Apple Products with like minded people. Now, the forums are filled with people bashing, hating, criticizing, “Haha stupid Timmy Cook” so much so that I don’t find most of the news article threads a place I go to anymore. To me, this is a big chunk of Macrumors posts today.

I don’t see Macrumors as **** (political party) supporting at all… politics aren’t allowed. Period. I guess to some that means they think Macrumors supports the side they don’t agree with.

I’ll give you this … threads are FULL of great people who spent sometimes decades of their lives to make this site amazing - who are now permanently SUSPENDED. Find any old thread and sometimes 20-30% of the people are SUSPENDED. This is a big problem I have with Macrumors. Suspended left and right - I actually left Macrumors for a few years because they permanently suspended their biggest fan over something I’d consider a non-issue. Suspensions happen way too easily and too quickly imo. But I’m not a moderator, this isn’t my site, and it’s just my $.02.

And yeah, the News posts are getting a bit obnoxious but all news today is pretty inedible … but maybe it’s just me… However, Macrumors not my site, I’m not going to tell Arn how to run it. The mods put in a lot of work - they’re worked to the bone and I believe for free... However, how we’re treated while in this house definitely has changed how I act and operate here.
 
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I'm not here for the news, rumors, or politics. Consequently, I do not see or engage in anything described above.

I have a lot of friends on this site, relationships built over time since August 2011 when I joined. The topics of discussion have been PowerPC Macs, Intel Macs, iPhones, iPads and things that often have an iffy alignment with those topics such as coffee and the weather.

I stick to the suggestion that was made when I signed up. And that's no personal attacks, staying on topic (for the most part), and avoiding politics and one word posts. I wish to continue being here with my friends, so I try to follow the rules. Yes, I've been moderated in the past, and some of it I felt was unfair. But I've never been censored.

If the day ever comes where Arn is shutting off the lights and locking the door, he'll probably be asking me why I'm still here. It's not a website for me. It's a third place, a community where I fit in because I have shared interests with others here.
 
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My suggestion is if you like the site participate and read the user guides and know what is acceptable discourse. To the best of my knowledge this site does not censor.

It’s my opinion people who believe this site is biased post inappropriate content. But as I said, if you like to participate then do so. If politics trips you up, stay out of the political forum.

And do t read online reviews from people who have an axe to grind.
 
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I believe "suspended" can also be voluntary.

In other words, people who - for whatever reason - want to stop themselves logging in can ask to have their account suspended.

How many do that vs how many were moderator-suspended, who knows. Unless I'm wrong, in which case it's 100% mods/admins 😁
 
adrianlondon said:
I believe "suspended" can also be voluntary.

In other words, people who - for whatever reason - want to stop themselves logging in can ask to have their account suspended.

How many do that vs how many were moderator-suspended, who knows. Unless I'm wrong, in which case it's 100% mods/admins 😁
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You could be right, tho I think the Cancelled one is voluntary (that’s the one I did for a few years) - Suspended always results from Mod behavior - @Weaselboy would know. 😛
 
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I’ve had some extremely tame things removed and have received warnings for them. I was blown away with how dramatic the response to my message felt.

I’ve learned if someone is rude to you here and tries to start things with you, then you can’t fight back in any way, shape, or form. You have to just report them and move on if you don’t want to risk losing your account.
 
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This site wants poster to discuss the topic and not the poster. Passive-aggressive ad-homs are not really tolerated. Telling someone you are putting them on ignore is treated as off-topic. And so in and so forth.

All of these tidbits are in the members agreement.
 
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I have had messages from moderators, some justified, others not so much. @maflynn could be a real spoilsport sometimes 😂

That said, I have seen some truly shocking moderation, but that's just every forum that ever existed since forums began; they don't always get it right even with the best intentions.

A ton of good people here, but also a lot of antagonists and some very obvious post farmers who love to constantly post the obvious in every thread they can, but they gotta keep moving up the posting charts like it still means something.

What I have noticed on MR is that the number of posters is going down; there are fewer and fewer. You see all the same names in a lot of threads across the forums. AI will propel that, people will get the answers they need from that and have no need to register and, subsequently, no reason to stay and participate. The issue with that is that the same group of people are often the ones directing the tone of everything.
 
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My issue with Macrumors is that I don't always know what's a paid advertisement, what's a "sponsored review", and what's a legitimate review. For that alone, I only consider MR a source of rumors and speculation. The forum is very nice though. Not perfect, but better than most public-internet spaces in this day and age.

If we're going to name and shame, I've been spanked by weaselboy before 😉 but I've also been part of threads that have gotten wildly out of hand and been surprised I at how civil the moderators are. If you want to see actually bad moderation, go check out r/apple.
 
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Just some observations. I've tried to keep them politically neutral (hence, no examples) but see the last point...
  • Although "freedom of speech" is good, MacRumors are not "the government" and have no legal obligation in that respect.
  • Unless the mods read every single article, a lot of what gets moderated is going to be skewed towards what gets reported - so any perceived inconsistency in moderation might come from what the community chooses to report rather than the moderators.
  • It's not the mods' fault if the tech industry is becoming increasingly politicised.
  • I suspect that a lot of the disagreements result from people posting politics in non-politics topics. Unfortunately, what constitutes "politics" is itself a matter of political opinion, so you've got a paradox right there...
 
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"Pro USA biased news site." "Political nonsense." "Censorship." Good grief. Sounds like sour grapes. Unless they are posting from countries that do not allow free speech, they can go to any website to explain how the RAM configuration of the Macbook Neo is an American conspiracy to ruin the world. Must we all be subject to these "insights" here?
 
Out of curiosity does anyone know how many moderators there exits? It seems to be the same two and especially one that shows up when people are suspended/banned/get posts deleted.

At least when looking at the reviews but also to my personal experience.

Reviews - Trustpilot
 
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thejadedmonkey said:
My issue with Macrumors is that I don't always know what's a paid advertisement, what's a "sponsored review", and what's a legitimate review.
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macrumors.zendesk.com

Are news stories really advertising in disguise?

No. We always identify our promotional arrangements, and we don't post undisclosed paid stories. If we think you'll be interested in a particular story about a Mac or iOS app, or a commercial ...
macrumors.zendesk.com macrumors.zendesk.com

Here is a FAQ that might help.
 
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my .02 ...

touch grass.jpg


(or something of similar effect)
 
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MacRumors posted an article today that gets to the heart of my issues with this site. The article was about Apple TV and Homepod launching soon, and it's on the front page as we speak. If we as users are told to follow the rules, shouldn't MacRumors be held to the same standard? When does repeated news articles start bordering on spam, and this specific one has been repeated a lot in the last year?

I get this is a news site and you need clicks. Still, when you post the same articles every 2 weeks, when does that stop becoming posting the news and just posting spam instead? Also, I think we need a moratorium of Mark Gurman articles because he seems to be wrong more than he's right. Also, I've started calling it the boy who cried wolf effect, meaning you post the same thing over and over and people will stop believing you.
 
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sjsharksfan12 said:
MacRumors posted an article today that gets to the heart of my issues with this site. The article was about Apple TV and Homepod launching soon, and it's on the front page as we speak. If we as users are told to follow the rules, shouldn't MacRumors be held to the same standard? When does repeated news articles start bordering on spam, and this specific one has been repeated a lot in the last year? And I can't post my feelings about it in the article itself because I have before, it got deleted and when I did it again I got a 2 day ban from the site. That basically means I have to self censor, but I'm hoping because this thread is open I can actually give feedback.

I get this is a news site and you need clicks. Still, when you post the same articles every 2 weeks, when does that stop becoming posting the news and just posting spam instead? Also, I think we need a moratorium of Mark Gurman articles because he seems to be wrong more than he's right. Also, I've started calling it the boy who cried wolf effect, meaning you post the same thing over and over and people will stop believing you.
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That thingy in the middle of the two buttons is called a scroll wheel.

1785249731123.png
 
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Brettka7 said:
I’ve had some extremely tame things removed and have received warnings for them. I was blown away with how dramatic the response to my message felt.

I’ve learned if someone is rude to you here and tries to start things with you, then you can’t fight back in any way, shape, or form. You have to just report them and move on if you don’t want to risk losing your account.
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If 'fighting back' to you means a personal attack (calling them names, etc), then yeah. You're going to get moderated. You attack their argument. I have never been moderated for attacking the argument. If they persist and all they are doing is personally attacking you, then you report them.

The idea is that the moderators don't want a series of posts that are nothing but personal attacks between users. Everyone else is not interested in reading that.
 
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Madhatter32 said:
Unless they are posting from countries that do not allow free speech, they can go to any website to explain how the RAM configuration of the Macbook Neo is an American conspiracy to ruin the world.
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There are plenty of front-page articles that report on issues with political implications. I'd say that the reports are themselves are usually pretty factual - but the comments are often very political (hence some articles directing the comments to the politics sessions & limiting posts to established users).
 
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LeeW said:
@maflynn could be a real spoilsport sometimes 😂
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maflynn, when he was moderating, was one of the few who would explain things to me and NOT further moderate me for 'arguing'.

What some users also don't seem to understand is that the mods can also be helpful. There have been several times where maflynn moved threads, stickied threads and ran off some spam users in the PowerPC Macs subreddit - all at our request.
 
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