Eric G.

Xfinity is not fun. When my wife and I purchased a new home we went with Verizon Fios. Getting the hardware in place was an all day affair. It has been worth it. The service has been flawless, signal strength is awesome - we have never had issues. The only issue we have had was getting signal extenders hooked up for some of the outlying areas of the house. Customer Service walked even a technically unable through the process and it was fixed. Someone clearly thought through the equipment, making sure it synchronizes and functions will ease. Adjustments to service can be done online or through our television to customize the package as we see fit. In fact, the only issue we have had was power outages. That includes a poll coming down. Though we did not know it, Verizon owned the down poll. Upon being informed, they had a replacement poll up within 24 hours. Affected houses still using Xfinity further down the line had to wait several more days to have their service restored. Verizon, in sharp contrast, took great care of our property while effecting repairs. Xfinity drove their truck onto soggy ground, after being instructed not to (they actually asked and pointed out the dangers - then did it anyway). They left a series of ruts on our lawn and then attempted to scamper away. Our neighbors complain about spotty service and outages, and we have had none. Price is comparable to Xfinity, but every aspect of Verizon has been a snap. At this point, I have to wonder why anyone would bother to use Xfinity at all?

I am a veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan. I have been answering questions about these wars and armed conflict in general for the previous two years without incident. I answered a question about war crimes truthfully. The question was whether it was a war crime to attack a civilian building. The answer is that it depends. If the building has been occupied by one side's military forces then opposing military forces can attack the building, even if the primary use of the building is civilian. The law applies equally to all parties to a conflict, be they Russia vs Ukraine, the various combatants in Syria, Ethiopia, Yemen, Myanmar, etc. If facts are unpopular, Tracy Chou's article on what happens is helpful. All manner of poorly informed experts can, and do, show up and hurl all manner of abuse.

As per Tracy Chou's article, being thoughtful and true doesn't necessarily equate to being free from abuse. Reddit did not care when Tracy was abused, and it does not care now. In fact, it looks like Reddit employees, admins, actively support this abuse. When regular users accuse you of supporting sexual assault and other banalities, they can be blocked. That can't happen when the abuser is a Reddit admin. If accurately stating how the Law of War informs war crimes angers people, the admins will not reign in the abuse. If you block people hurling the abuse? The admins will actively move to full participation in the abuse.

Many of the more popular subs have admins acting as moderators. A quick look at the other reviews indicates that these admin/moderators are thin-skinned, capricious, and vindictive - viewing users as little more than vermin. In proof of pattern, a Reddit admin stepped into the situation without reading. When context quickly established that his take was unmoored from the facts of the issue, he escalated into accusing me of supporting genocide, advocating war crimes, and, later, inciting hate speech. (See below) The only way to end this nonsense is by demonstrating that the admin in question is wrong. That is impossible when the admin does not read and views being challenged as a personal affront. The more links I provided to establish context, the angrier and more aggressive the admin became until he retaliated and completely nuked my accounts. Apparently, both taking time to establish context and conceding a point are scurrilous sins among admins?

To be clear, saying, "what you are accusing me of doing did not happen (with evidence)," had no discernable effect other than to trigger the Reddit employee's temper. Every allegation in the attachment is provably false and it does not matter. Reddit is paying people to behave like this. Users triggering the tempers of employees come into innocent contact with these crusading cyber bullies through two other methods. Users can report any interaction directly to admins, but Reddit, at best, has a few dozen employees monitoring 31 million reports every year based on Reddit's own report. Users are actively complaining that reporting actual violations are pointless. Reddit's few employees cannot possibly investigate that many reports. As a result, Reddit staff just clears or substantiates the reports based on little more than a whim. If they do substantiate something? Well, in 2019 when Reddit created this report, they publicly promised to both establish context and avoid being heavy-handed. Good luck getting an admin to establish context in that deluge.

The other method is to contact the admins directly through r/help. The more salacious the allegation, the more likely the admins are to issue strikes without reading. My first interaction with the admin team came from a foreign military officer fundamentally misinterpreting how a piece of military equipment was used. He demanded that I concede it was used differently than I used it in actual combat, before descending into allegations that my leadership in very real battles was suspect – surely he would have done a better job? Obviously, this guy was not interested in a discussion and I blocked him. The moderators, all veterans, of the sub got wind of what he was doing and banned him. Problem solved? Nope. He contacted the admins who decided I was harassing a blocked user (apparently, preventing someone from communicating with you against your will is harassing them) and hurling hate speech at him. They clearly did not read anything. A year later? Still waiting for a response from Reddit.

Reddit's non-response to the latest imbroglio, nothing, is hardly a surprise. Reddit actively allowed the admin to retaliate. If I were a genocidal maniac demanding more war crimes, this should be easy, right? It is, but Reddit would rather go to great gaslighting lengths to convince someone that they are … a war criminal … rather than tell an employee he messed up? The horror.

Fed up, I contacted Reddit legal, and issued a deadline for a refund. There were two responses to this demand. First, the admins cleared every insult hurled at me, after first claiming there were no insults in the thread. These were sent at the direction of their automated prompts. They cleared every aspect of the abusive tirade hurled at me by the admin, and then every salacious allegation including allegations of supporting sexual assault. Accusing customers of genocide, war crimes, and sexual assault is usually something businesses avoid. Stated simply, the employee's conduct entitles me to a full refund for the unused and now unusable credits, particularly as Reddit is failing to remedy the abusive admin's behavior.

The only other response appears to be a stealth attempt to change the user agreement. When I signed on the day after the deadline to record the relevant portion of the user agreement, Reddit had changed it (without updating the revision date, a serious lapse of integrity and likely a fraudulent attempt to void damages). My purchased credits were now worthless, and thus not subject to refund? It is apparently my content policy violation that caused the damage and not the actions of rampaging, thin skinned admin hurling specious and unsupportable allegations?

The problem here is that Reddit's user agreement says that your access to these products is unfettered so long as you follow the user agreement and content policy. If you block access to purchased goods based on false pretense, you have created real damages. A spiffy post hoc does not change that reality. In this case, such an allegedly egregious violation should be easy. Reddit could easily trot out the evidence of something as blatant as advocating war crimes and other egregious violations. They aren't doing so because there is no evidence of such behavior. It did not happen. Rather than acknowledge this factual reality and the egregious nature of the false allegation, Reddit chooses to sustain it anyway, apparently bereft of understanding of what accusing people of war crimes creates and why most people do not hurl these kinds of allegations.

Rather than remedy the situation, Reddit will change the rules to avoid entirely predictable consequences of tolerating and encouraging that behavior in its staff. This stealth editing has a history. When u/spez, the Reddit CEO, was caught editing other user's comments with little consequence the lesson that you can get away with this apparently became entrenched in Reddit's corporate culture. Users not caving to the insults of an abusive employee with a temper and a flair for cruelty and retaliatory pique … well, the employee is violating both policies without consequences. You cannot prevent these guys from harassing you on Reddit. The Content Policy appears to be little more than a sop to public relations.

This behavior is not isolated, other users have complained of getting booted for offering fashion advice … as requested by the sub catering to fashion. Others are banned for daring to say that death threats aimed at SCOTUS might be inappropriate (indeed, after reading the content policy, it is those threats that violate said policy). Others report being banned for hate speech for talking about things like golf. All appear to be derivative of admins not policing but abusing. Reviews substantiate both the wide prevalence of this behavior and Reddit's abysmal, indeed non-existent, response to this behavior. Tracy Chou's article was published two years ago, and Reddit's response to similar abuse remains strikingly similar.

I have never before been accused of supporting genocide because I, like most sane people, do not support genocide (that I even need to make that point is ludicrous). Most people, and indeed every other business on the planet, recognize just how toxic the behavior is. Reddit doesn't just want to facilitate these facile screeds, but they want to fight to keep our money on top of exposing us to these employees?

In a word: No.

Small claims court is cheap, and I was following Reddit's policies, I should have access to the credits I purchased. All appeals to remedy the situation are actively avoided. The idea that you can abuse a customer and make them pay for that abuse is just silly. If Reddit cannot train and discipline its employees so that they do not accuse their customers of genocide? Then they have some serious management issues.

They disagree and think they can hurl those accusations? Make me pay for it? I will see them is court. Reddit has made it clear that they are petty enough to fight an absurd allegation of someone who has been tapped to fix war crimes issues in the real world with secretly supporting war crimes. I genuinely can't wait to see the song and dance trotted out to defend that nonsense.

I can say I have never before encountered a business this obtrusive and abusive. Be careful with this business. Mendacity is well cooked into the culture.

Update: You can see that the issues with admins continue. If you spend any money on the site, you can lose it and access to all the content you provide based on little more than a whim. The pattern is the same, users follow rules and capricious admins ban accounts, ignore appeals, and Reddit executives ignore the behavior. If you purchase premium accounts, NFTs, or other 'collectibles', be prepared to take Reddit to small claims court. Anything less will be ignored.

Previous experience with grubhub was not good. We had a driver in the area who would take all of the tipped orders and then (with then tracker on), go, park somewhere for hours at a time. Grubhub took no action.

Fast forward to having a baby. We received a gift card and attempted to use the gift card. Grubhub refused entered the card onto the account and the …charged our account anyway. Again, just had a baby, and can't use grubhub gift card for diapers. Grubhub told it was our fault because we did not select them gift card as payment. We can't, and screen captured the options where the gift card was not coming up. Grubhub ignored it. They refused to transfer the balance to the gift card and will not refund the gift card back to our account. Ergo, we have a ‘gift card' we cannot use because their screwed up system won't let us, and they will not refund the gift card … meaning they basically just stole the amount. We've had to initiate a dispute through our bank and will be closing our account. Not having these types of petty issues with DoorDash or Uber Eats, and will, never, again expose ourselves to this behavior. They can't even figure out how use a gift card and think customers will allow them to screw with their families? They've just gone nuts. They think they should get to choose whether families need diapers or grubhub? Done with these guys.,

I stumbled into quora looking for something different, and, in all honesty, found the Q&A approach not only different, but productive.

Unfortunately, there are some serious issues with the administrators of the site that are, IMHO, fundamentally undermining quora. A brief search turns up numerous issues with moderation and administration. However, I had no idea moderation could be bad - so bad that calling it moderation would be misleading - it's more like empowered trolling.

Here is what happened, all in less than two weeks.

Up front: not only am I a combat veteran (both Iraq and Afghanistan), and I remain on active duty.

I stumbled into quora and began looking around, and found some fairly thoughtful answers to religious questions, and, initially mistook the comments section for something more like a standard discussion forum. No worries. I will state that anyone who has attempted to discuss religion online in any forum is aware that you need some thick skin. When I asked, innocuously mind you, how someone could know at the age of five that they were right (user happened to be atheist, but the question would apply to anyone claiming to have the entire religious issue figured out 30 years ago when they were five years old). Rather than get a response... I was accused of being an army of sock puppets harassing the user. (Really, I am just one guy and it was one question that set the tirade off. OK. A guy to clearly stay away from, and, in this day and age, a fairly simple issue to address and resolve for even the most incapable of moderation teams.

Unfortunately, that is where the administration of quora stepped in. Apparently, zealotry is fine, because I suddenly found myself being attacked by an admin, openly and brazenly after that incident, accusing me of 'stolen valor'. Its good to know that one's supposed affiliation with a particular religion is the keystone in determining whether or not someone served in combat. (I assure you, people of all faiths have served in combat). The admin's attack was based on my disclosure of having served as a combat advisor where I was embedded with Iraqi forces. That the admin was unaware that this strategic practice occurred, indeed its what Colin Powell did in Vietnam and is a cornerstone of counterinsurgency strategy, was met with a brutal series of accusations - all public. Eventually, when the comments were reported, they were deleted - but the admin just keep coming back and pursuing groundless accusations for stolen valor.

I attempted to ignore it, and just keep answering questions about the military - enough so that the community could tell I had served (and continued to serve). The accusations kept coming from the admin though. I contacted the moderation team, from my military account, and offered to share my ORB (Officer Records Brief) - which should have ended the fracas. Nothing going. The admin just kept attacking.

Instead, in disclosing the information, I found that the admin was recruiting posters who began flame baiting me. Even innocuous comments like 'bugger off,' where slapped as violations by the admin. Worse, the admin was disclosing information ONLY provided to the admin team, information that was coming back to me through a seres of recruited trolls. Reports of this activity went without reply.

When the accusations of stolen valor continued, I looked a bit more closely at the admin's postings, who claims to be a combat veteran in his own right. It turns out, if not stolen valor, he has clearly exaggerated his own service. He insinuated that he was an officer, demanding things like IOBC and Ranger School Dates, in addition to DD214 (which you don't have when you are still on active duty). He also claims that he 'shot people' after 'watching a movie' and 'in route to bed' (that is certainly quite a bit different than the combat I faced)... in a way that would have required him to shoot through walls. He also claims to have attempted to shoot a mother firing a pistol from behind a child with an open bolt weapon system... that did not discharge when he pulled the trigger because the links were upside down (that is not how a machine gun works). There was no ROE discussion, no commentary from our hero's Assistant Gunner, etc. It rapidly became clear that our admin was enlisted (nothing wrong with that, but why would he strongly claim to be an officer then?) and that he served in the early part of the war... and came home to a ticker tape parade no less - a experience not shared by many vets, especially when you return home from our current forgotten war in Afghanistan.

Not only do we have a hyper aggressive admin on a personal crusade based on religious bigotry, we have a hyper aggressive admin who attacks combat veterans and thinks a single enlisted man should provide the sole picture of the complex realities of the wars we have fought and how they have evolved.

Again, should have been simple for the admin 'team' to fix. Instead, they allowed him to ban me, refused to respond the appeals, have offered no explanation for atrocious behavior, and have allowed the admin to lie with impunity (despite repeated presentation of evidence that the admin was callously lying). A little digging, and it rapidly became clear I am not the first vet who has been treated like this by this guy. Quota's response? Silence.

How hard is it to hold someone accountable for being a jack hole? Impossible for this organization. So long as it allows its 'leaders' to treat people this way, quora will... only go so far.

Wish them the best of luck, and really admire the format - but the moderation/admin is out of control. I'd love to see quora respond to this with some semblance of integrity, but... I won't hold my breath.