Tutoring News Post
Why you Can—and Can’t—Trust Reddit for Advice on the Digital SAT, LSAT, GRE, & GMAT
Today, on the other hand, Google results have grown increasingly similar and corporate. Why is it almost unanimously agreed that Reddit mods are terrible? "But every internet forum needs moderation...it's the internet, after all," you might say. While it is certainly true that some Reddit user accounts are created for spam, hate, and disinformation, and thus deserve to be banned, mods should not be allowed to selectively decide which individuals and/or companies can promote themselves, and which cannot—because this creates a clear financial incentive to bribe these moderators. Totalitarian moderator behavior also prevents us from hearing the perspectives of well-meaning users who are new, and would like to share their varied experiences and/or advice, but are blocked from posting for a variety of petty reasons: not enough post or comment karma, Reddit account not old enough, the mods just don't like you or are having a bad day, they have banned you out of personal and/or professional envy, et cetera. Even those who do remain active on these subreddits must "kiss the ring" and parrot the moderators' talking points, or else risk the same fate. Thus, there is little to no diversity of opinions expressed. r/SAT has nearly 500,000 members, but is run by a highly biased and unqualified moderation team, including "Donald Keyman," an admitted employee of UWorld, and includes many "power users" such as "Rich in Pitt," who are essentially College Board apologists—in all likelihood, anonymous employees of the College Board who are paid to parrot its corporate talking points online. Despite frequent ethical concerns about Mr. Keyman's moderation role that have been reported to Reddit by myself and many others (in particular, repeated and egregious violations of Rule #5 of the Reddit moderator code of conduct), nothing has yet been done about this issue by the other moderators--or by the Reddit admin team. At the same time, Keyman and his best buddy "InternationalistGam" (the current r/SAT top moderator) have also banned any SAT tutor from the forum who dares to self-promote—especially the most popular ones, such as yours truly, who have publicly called attention to Keyman's obvious company man bias—and who have dared to correct the hyper-sensitive r/SAT moderators when they spout their daily, ignorant misinformation about college admissions and the SAT. Most of the r/SAT moderators ("mods") have no clue about the new digital SAT aka DSAT, for example, and haven't bothered to educate themselves on the issue, instead throwing out incorrect and off-the-cuff advice to impressionable high schoolers, who tend to assume—incorrectly—that the mods know what they are talking about. -Whether the digital SAT has a serious problem with exam leaks: any posts or comments mentioning leaks on r/SAT are quickly removed, but this does not change the fact that dozens of DSAT forms have already been leaked on Telegram, Reddit, and elsewhere. It's unclear why the r/SAT moderators won't even let users discuss this vital issue of digital SAT exam security, especially since they have frequently been known to let their guard down and allow leaked real DSAT questions (example 1 / example 2 / example 3 / example 4 / example 4 backup / example 5 / example 6 / example 7 / example 8 / example 9 / example 10 / example 11 / example 12 / example 13 / example 14 / example 15 / example 16 / example 17 / example 18 / example 19 / example 20 / example 21 / example 22 / example 23 / example 24) to appear on their subreddit for several hours (or even days) at a time before one of the slow-to-respond, volunteer mods eventually bothers to remove it. Update, 11/26/24: The nine-person r/SAT moderation team has finally agreed to publicly address this issue—in its characteristically passive-aggressive, responsibility-deflecting manner, of course. Instead of blaming themselves (as they of course should) for allowing dozens of leaked digital SAT questions to be posted on their subreddit for hours or days at a time, the mods have instead imposed unnecessarily strict (yet easily circumvented) question posting rules, and threatened to permanently ban any user who dares to comment or provide an explanation to one of these questions—as if a random student, parent, or teacher can be expected to tell the difference between an officially released College Board question and a leaked one. Am I surprised by any of this? Definitely not. It's just yet another example of the incompetent, hypocritical, biased, and inconsistent moderation style that has characterized the r/SAT subreddit since its inception. The moderators continue to act as if the threat of a permanent ban has a significant effect on user behavior, but those in the know understand that bans are mostly an empty threat: it is far too easy to create multiple, anonymous Reddit accounts for the express purpose of ban evasion. In other words: spammers on Reddit are going to continue spamming and posting prohibited content—whether the r/SAT moderation team likes it or not. Thus, the onus to prevent leaked DSAT questions from appearing on the subreddit is on the r/SAT moderators themselves, not on its thousands of anonymous daily users, most of whom are teenagers. Ultimately, when it comes to r/SAT, please don't trust any of the moderators or "power users" to provide truly informed, impartial, and uncensored information about the digital SAT and/or PSAT. Despite what r/LSAT mod Graeme Blake would like you to believe, there is no r/LSAT moderation "team" — it is in fact run by one self-promoting, post-removing, competition-banning LSAT tutor who utilizes a group of alternative usernames, aka "alts," in order to appear as if there were an actual group of individuals in charge of the 12 year-old subreddit with over 197,000 subscribers. In reality, of course, there isn't: although r/LSAT has the appearance of a mod team, it's just law-school dropout Blake, standing behind the curtain with his trusty "remove" button, ready to delete any posts or comments that he deems detrimental to himself, his own LSAT prep company, or his former (and current?) employer, 7Sage. Mr. Blake has tried his best to censor these facts, of course—but in reality, he is a fraud, a hypocrite, and an incompetent—one whose only remaining, viable method of promoting his LSAT tutoring business is through abusing his moderation powers (and explicitly violating Rule #5 of the Reddit moderator code of conduct). Blake has even tried (and failed) in recent months to "collect" / take over additional test-prep subreddits as moderator—which suggests that his current grift as the r/LSAT mod isn't working well enough to pay the bills. Financial desperation leads to a breach in ethics—a story as old as time. https://testmaxprep.com/blog/lsat/beware-of-lsat-wolves-in-sheeps-clothing Without a Graeme of Evidence - YouTube r/LSAT Shadow Ban Hurts the LSAT Community - YouTube Is there a 7Sage bias on Reddit's r/LSAT subreddit? What mod Graeme Blake doesn't want you to know - YouTube Finally, Blake has provided no evidence whatsoever of his claimed 177 LSAT score, and prefers not to mention that he never graduated from law school. Due in part to Blake's clear bias and lack of leadership, toxicity, ableism, and harassment have been chronic problems on r/LSAT. Meanwhile, honest queries about the proper way to prepare for the LSAT — the entire purpose of the subreddit — go largely ignored, and the moderator continues to peddle the highly incorrect advice that 1) you should never cancel your LSAT score and 2) your best LSAT score is the only score that matters. The truth is all LSAT scores from the last 5 years are listed on the official LSAC score report sent to law schools. In fact, some universities have explicitly admitted to considering an applicant's entire visible LSAT testing history. (LSAT scores cannot be sent individually, and cancellations are indicated as a "C," alongside the test date.) Petulant, insecure, and autocratic Mr. Blake writes a series of milquetoast LSAT PrepTest guides with lazy, 1-or-2 sentence answer choice explanations that leave very much to the imagination: the explanations are low-quality and low-effort, so the books sell a low number of copies. That's why he's constantly offering a 35% discount on all of his other mediocre LSAT services, too. (Note that he also removed that comment, by the way...because of course he did!) Also note that real LSAT questions are in fact successfully posted on that subreddit all the time, but that they would be posted much more frequently if Blake weren't unnecessarily scaring people away. If r/LSAT were a courtroom—and Mr. Blake a judge instead of a failed attorney—then he would almost certainly be forced to recuse himself due to his blatant conflict of interest. Also note that the one person making comments to defend TTP on all three of the Reddit posts linked above is the sole creator of the TTP Verbal component--even though they have not identified themselves as such. Although this person is no longer employed by Target Test Prep (feel free draw your own conclusions as to why), they should not be permitted by moderators to defend their former employer on r/GMAT without first publicly revealing their blatant and obvious bias. As time continues to pass and their subscriber count grows, most popular test-prep subreddits eventually become flooded with useless spam, including the notorious “How do I go from (score X) to (score Y) in 30 days???” posts that no one cares about. If the subreddit's moderators choose to care, and to pay attention—which is a big "if"—then they might post some useful, updated information in the sub's "sidebar" ... or they might not. Even on the rare occasions when the mods do make an effort, it's often for the purpose of self-promotion and/or profit, not true public service (see: r/LSAT's tutor "directory," which conveniently lists the mod as the #1 tutoring option, and requires moderator approval to be listed).
How to View Deleted Reddit Posts & Comments in Seconds (YouTube) Content Moderation at Scale is Impossible to Do Well EPILOGUE, 5/14/25: I am delighted to announce that power-tripping former mod and admitted UWorld employee "Donald Keyman" has been officially removed as r/SAT moderator! Kudos to the Reddit admins for finally doing the right thing. Blake has also finally, quietly added my personal favorite LSAT Lab to the resource list on the sub's sidebar / pinned post--though LSAT Demon is still of course nowhere to be found. -Brian
|
Subscribe to our RSS Feed
