Reddit Updates Content Policy, Bans More Subreddits 410
AmiMoJo writes: Reddit's new CEO, Steve Huffman, announced new a content policy and the banning of a small number of subreddits today. Additionally, some subreddits will be "quarantined", so users can't see their content unless they explicitly opt in. "Our most important policy over the last ten years has been to allow just about anything so long as it does not prevent others from enjoying Reddit for what it is: the best place online to have truly authentic conversations.I believe these policies strike the right balance."
The names of the nixed subreddits make clear that they're not exactly neighbors exchanging pleasantries.
Hmmm. (Score:3, Insightful)
So, it's banning communities of people who draw distasteful pictures, and those who are racist against black people?
1) Abhorrent as the former are, who are they harming? i.e. what is the objective justification for banning them, beyond, "These people are fucking sick" - probably true, but so what?
2) While the latter appears may include some groups dedicated to posting gore videos posted without subject consent, there seem to be some fairly mild groups among that list when contrasted with other non-racist harassment groups that have not been banned.
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Haven't you heard? Words can 'trigger' people, now, somehow...someway. If it hurts 'muh feels' then it's wrong, end of discussion.
Meanwhile, racial generalizations about white people are perfectly acceptable discourse. They must 'check their privilege' after all as whites 'can't be victims of racism'. For great social justice, we get signal boost!
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It's pretty simple. If you give racists a home on your site, they will start congregating on your site (because nobody else will let them post their openly racist bullshit). The thing is, they don't just stick to the explicitly racist forums, they'll start using the whole site, as any other user. When you have a sizable number of racist users, submitting links, making comments and voting to increase the visibility of content as an organized bloc (remember, all links & comments on Reddit are pushed to
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They don't have to. Then again, as they keep changing the rules, it's difficult to argue against people who were perfectly compliant to the former rules that they did something wrong.
Re:Hmmm. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hmmm. (Score:4, Insightful)
The rules are that anything that causes Reddit headaches or additional work is subject to be banned, or so the CEO has said in his latest comments on this round of quarantining/banning. Though their new policy doesn't exactly make it clear that's the case. So anything they don't like or that makes them work is subject to being removed from the site.
Speaking as someone who runs an internet forum, I can appreciate their position on that point. If 2% of the people cause 90% of the problems, the obvious thing to do is ban those 2%.
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No it's not. Here's you you do it:
"Previously the rules didn't ban your odious behavior. We've fixed the rules."
Re:Have to (Score:2)
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'Freedom of speech' is an awesome and wonderful thing. But where do you draw the line?
It's simple: you don't. It's right there in the First Amendment: any speech is legal, as long as it isn't something along the lines of yelling "fire" in a theater.
However, the thing everyone keeps missing is that some random internet site (in this case, Reddit) is owned by some other person or entity, and they can censor stuff on their own site as much as they want. If you don't like it, find another site, or buy your o
Re:Hmmm. (Score:5, Informative)
However, the thing everyone keeps missing is that some random internet site (in this case, Reddit) is owned by some other person or entity, and they can censor stuff on their own site as much as they want. If you don't like it, find another site, or buy your own.
This can't be stated enough. Freedom of speech is a protection from government censorship, not websites, stores, or other private operations. It amazes me how many people just don't get that.
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This can't be stated enough. Freedom of speech is a protection from government censorship, not websites, stores, or other private operations. It amazes me how many people just don't get that.
Blatantly false. Freedom of speech is a basic human right, a founding principle of the USA, and an all-around good thing to have. The First Amendment only protects you from censorship by the federal government, and by other amendments, state and local governments (not that that stop state-funded universities from becoming the least-free places in America for speech).
The owner of a website has every legal right to be an asshole to his users. Doesn't change the fact he's still being an asshole, and should
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Semantics. Clearly, I was referring to the First Amendment protection from government censorship, not freedom of speech in general.
Another point that I want to make: A website telling you that you cannot speak about certain things is not in ANY way curtailing or abridging your right to free speech. They are not telling you that you cannot talk about a subject, just that you cannot talk about a subject HERE. That is an important distinction. Yes, you have the freedom to speak about whatever you like, wheneve
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But if Reddit (or any other site) bans a topic of conversation, they are not infringing on your free speech rights. You're still free to say it. Just not there.
If a site used to allow X, and now they don't allow X, then I am now obvious, in practice, less free to express X than before. If it's a knitting site, and X has nothing to do with knitting, that's one thing. But if users has areasonable expection based on the history of the site that "here's a place we can talk about X", and the site then changes to ban X, then they're being assholes.
If you create an online community, then destroy it, you're an asshole. Simple as that.
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But if users has a reasonable expection based on the history of the site that "here's a place we can talk about X", and the site then changes to ban X, then they're being assholes.
This is exactly what Huffman's been doing. Basically, he's trying to turn in into San Angelo from Demolition Man... a happy-happy safe-place where no one ever hears a harsh word. That whirring sound you hear? It's Aaron Swartz spinning in his grave.
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For every horror in all of history, every genocide, those who spoke against the horror were labeled as "toxic nincompoops who spew vitriol". Merely because the label is often correct is no excuse for banning it. Keeping it off the front page so people do see it by accident? Sure - do that thing.
But Reddit has clearly changed from a place that built a community on the promise of free speech, to a place that's monetizing it's community. Wouldn't want anything offensive on the rails of the money train.
Meh
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This can't be stated enough. Freedom of speech is a protection from government censorship, not websites, stores, or other private operations.
On the one hand. Yes. You are right.
On the other hand, the entire internet is a collection of privately owned entities.
Your web host doesn't HAVE to have you as customer. So you get your own server.
Your data center doesn't HAVE to have you as a customer. So you host your server from your apartment.
Your landlord doesn't HAVE to have you as a tenant. So you buy your own property to put your server on.
Your ISP doesn't have to provide you service.
The internet -should- be a basic right. But its not.
I'm not sayin
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Actually, in 2012, that was what they were telling people.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ka... [forbes.com]
`Speaking of the founding fathers, I ask him what he thinks they would have thought of Reddit.
“A bastion of free speech on the World Wide Web? I bet they would like it,” he replies. It’s the digital form of political pamplets.`
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the anonymity of it just enables the absolute worst possible behavior in them
He said anonymously...
You can sit there all day long and say 'You have to take the bad with the good', and that's fine and dandy in the abstract, but the reality of that statement, completely unbounded, ends up destroying free speech: extremists end up being louder than everyone else because that's what extremists do.
There are extremists on both sides that do that, and people learn to just tune them out. It doesn't destroy free speech at all. What destroys free speech is banning anonymity. You seem to enjoy it yourself. You've used it to post a thoughtful and interesting comment (even though your premise is wrong).
Anonymous free speech is how the U.S. was founded (even The Federalist Papers were released using nom de plumes). It's how abolitionism took hold. It's how people in repressive re
Truly authentic conversations* (Score:5, Funny)
* but watch what you say
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"shadow banning" is a bizarre "banned not banned" situation. The shadowbanned person can post, and to them it looks as if their post goes through but nobody can see the post aside from admins and the poster.
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The only positive thing that shadowbanning does is to push-off the confrontation so that mods and admins don't have to deal with the day to day pushback from addressing site issues. I supp
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Shadowbanning isn't a moderator action, it's an admin action. You can ban someone from your subreddit, but it takes an admin to shadowban you. Though they say there are 'automated tools' that do it as well, of course the new CEO just finished say that "shadowbans are abused" then turned around and then a former FPH mod was shadowbanned asking why they they banned FPH when it broken none of the rules.
But hey, SRS is still there...and the vast majority of redditors know why. It's the home of ex-admins and a
Re:Maybe a reddit user can provide more insight (Score:4, Informative)
I've spoken with reddit users and have heard accusations that shadow bans are being abused. What's involved in shadow banning someone?
A shadow ban is a ban that is difficult for a bot to figure out (in theory, but it doesn't seem difficult to me). The user cannot tell the difference when logged in. However, their content is not being shown to anyone else. It should be as easy as clicking a permalink to one of your comments, then logging out and viewing the same permalink. If the comment is there when logged out, you are not shadow banned. I believe you can be shadow banned on both a subreddit and sitewide basis.
I have one non-throwaway reddit account, and I keep it away from the front page or anything controversial. For front paging, I used to use throwaways. Nowadays, I pretty much try to avoid reddit. But, yes in the past, shadow bans seemed to be quite zealously applied. Sure, I've said some controversial and even borderline trolling things. You can basically get shadow banned from a subreddit for offending a moderator. In my experience, shadow banning happens usually because you merely expressed an opinion that diverges from the normative or expected normative position of userbase at reddit, the so-called hivemind. It's permanent. That account is effectively toast.
Are people being shadow banned for being involved in unpopular sub-reddits?
That I do not know. Maybe someone should do some experiments.
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Yes. It first became apparent in various Middle East-related subs. Participation in any "undesirable" or "enemy" thread would get an account banned in all the "friendlies" (much like how passport stamps work over there), and due to the power and pettiness that some mods have amassed, this could become a site or shadow ban.
The shadow ban is truly insidious in its dishonesty. It may have been a way to combat bot recognition
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Shadow banning is something admins do when they just don't like you.
I posted a google search to someone's username, apparently to kids this counts as 'doxxing'.
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Are people being shadow banned for being involved in unpopular sub-reddits?
I don't know, but there was period where offensive sub-reddits were locked and required an email address and consent to view. During an interview with the CEO one user asked whether this was a tactic to identify any people who were involved with the sub-reddits. While it remains unsubstantiated it raises an interesting question. I am sure that Reddit logged the email addresses, and we will know within the next couple of weeks whether this was a plan to out visitors for shadowbans or overt bans.
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Not long after that. people will be outright persecuted, jailed or disappeared or murdered.
I did not realize Reddit was this serious...
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Same thing is silently going on elsewhere as well - like on 4chan.
The censorship canary is dead!
Voat (Score:2, Informative)
Do what every other exile from Reddit has been doing, move on over to voat. It's a lot more reliable now. Every day there's more content. And the users aren't shitty (mostly)!
Re:Voat (Score:5, Insightful)
NO. Stop going to a single site for everything.
<Back in my day> There were forums dedicated to separate topics. I didn't have to worry about someone judging my post on VWVortex by what I said on Slashdot. I kept separate usernames. Now everyone uses the same username for *everything*. And now every site has a 'facebook' login. I *DO NOT* want all of that stuff linked.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:the partial list, for the unititiated. (Score:5, Funny)
among the list of banned subreddits: /r/CoonTown, /r/WatchNiggersDie, /r/bestofcoontown, /r/koontown, /r/CoonTownMods, /r/CoonTownMeta.
not exactly sterling content that spurs thoughtful collaboration and debate. It harms the reddit brand, but id argue this is less censorship and more spam control. Reddits purpose is entertainment, social networking, and news. If you want flagrant unsubstantiated and indefensible racism, most routers still manage to handle connection requests to the servers at stormfront and about a hundred other different sites.
What is CoonTown, it is like Arkham City only with Eric Cartman instead of Bruce Wayne?
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You can only push the pendulum so far in one direction before it starts to swing back, and violently. Sadly, that is now happening. The West has brought this on itself.
Re:the partial list, for the unititiated. (Score:4, Insightful)
Translation: It's a biased and bigoted subreddit where mental midgets 'justify' their racism.
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You were told wrong. It's a place for overt racism, nothing more. The claim that black people have some kind of "privilege" where their crimes against white people are ignored (LOL) and crimes by white people against black people are sensationalized is just a lame attempt to give it a veneer of credibility. If you read the actual posts on those boards (well, archived copies now) you can see that they are actually just full of abuse by white supremacists.
As for why white on black crimes seem to make the news
Re:the partial list, for the unititiated. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, that does seem to be the trend on the national news these days. Stories of black on white crime, even some bad ones don't seem to get the publicity that white on black crime does. And, from what I understand, more whites are killed by cops annually than black are [washingtontimes.com] ?
I agree with this one..horrible. But horrible if a person of ANY race is killed by the cops unjustifiably. ALL lives matter.
Ok, this one, I'm hoping I'm reading your wrong, but this seems a VERY racist statement on your part?? Is the analogy of the role of Dog ==Blacks and Man == Whites? If so, you're saying the norm is for Blacks to kill/commit crimes on whites...which is so common place, it isn't really news?
That's the translation I'm getting from it....? If not, what did you really mean?
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It's not about numbers, it's about the specific problems that some predominantly black communities have.
Also, my "man bites dog" point is based on an old refers to an old phrase. It's not a comparison, it merely highlights the fact that the media is more interested in uncommon events than in common ones. Maybe it's not a common phrase where you are, I thought it was fairly universal.
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Good point, isn't it great to have this discourse to benefit of all who read it. Rather than censor those we disagree with, shouldn't we engage them?
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There is something legitimately wrong with you.
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Most crime is not interracial. Black person is more likely to kill another black person, and a white person is more likely to kill another white person (FBI statistics).
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Yes, all those poor oppressed white people by the black powers of the world. When will they get justice!
Racists. Always think they are oppressed. Well they are, and for good reasons. Same as religious zealots.
Re:the partial list, for the unititiated. (Score:5, Interesting)
According to SJW's and the far radical left, racism = prejudice + power. Thus only whites can be racists.
You can't forget all the crazy shit they're saying these days either, like ignoring someones race and basing actions on merit is racist. Merit is also racist, that's why github removed their meritocracy belief and inserted a CoC that directly targets whites. And before some radical nut starts with a 'lulz u white, u mad' post. Don't worry, you can call me a uncle tom, or something since I'm only half-white.
Redundancy (Score:3, Interesting)
If you want flagrant unsubstantiated and indefensible racism, most routers still manage to handle connection requests to the servers at stormfront and about a hundred other different sites.
That's exactly what I figured, too. There's already perfectly good places on the Internet for these folks to go. Maybe these sites aren't as cool 'n hip as Reddit, but then, coolness and hipness aren't so much of a concern for racists, are they? :-)
I kind of can't help but wonder if the older-school douchebags on Stormfront et al. will be happy to get the influx of new blood, or if it'll be their equivalent of Eternal September....
Re:the partial list, for the unititiated. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd argue that it is censorship, and ultimately it does damage the reddit brand.
People are being racist and horrible on your internet site. Get over it. Supporting free speech means defending people's rights and ability to speak, even if it is about things you do not like, be it pornography or racism. The increasingly shill excuses that these people in sites and subreddits most of us have never heard of people are "harassing" others is simply a hysterical veneer on a coldly calculated censorship drive.
Ban these racist sites today, what comes tomorrow? I'm sure there's a subreddit for so called "interracial porn". Is that racist? Does that get banned? What about subreddits promoting interracial marraige? Same sex marraige? Gay rights? You can easily find LOTS of people who think all of those are offensive. Do they get quarantined so reddit can maintain a cleaner media image? Go the other way in the US culture wars. What about subreddits against gay marraige? Against divorce? Promoting conservative religous values in society? Again LOTS of people are offended by those. Do we quarantine those too? Subreddits covering islamic terrorism? Incidents in the West Bank? Systemd criticism?
What is the condition for quarantine here? When does free speech break down? Answer: After a 2-3 year slow burn media campaign to demonize reddit for allowing subreddits to exist which offend media owners.
Reddit started off as a free speech site. Create the forum you want. For the last few years the presence of these relatively small racist or unpolitically correct subreddits has drawn the ire of those with media influence, and reddit has been placed under gigantic social and media pressure to effectively, enforce "basic standards of decency". Hence this quarantine.
You may agree that reddit was justified in conforming to the pressure in this case. But the next group to put media pressure on the site may not be the group you agree with. Reddit has made a decisive turn away from its free speech principles, and some of those applauding now will come to regret the loss of the promise that site once offered.
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So anti-SJWs who point out that discriminating against white cis males is still racism and that any racism ultimately works against all groups of people get lumped in with /r/Coontown white supremacist dickheads.
Flawless logic.
I'm opposed to censorship (Score:3, Insightful)
All kinds of forums, from Facebook on down to unheard of boards with a dozen members, have their rules. Some of them really piss me off, because they want only language, thoughts, and images that would be acceptable in kindergarden, or Sunday School. They REALLY piss me off.
On the other hand - "/r/WatchNiggersDie" - WTF? Hey - you don't have to like black people. You don't have to love them. You don't have to live with a black person. You don't have to talk to them. If you're so bigoted that you can't abide a black person in your life, well, it's your loss. Hate, all you want. You have no right to expect normal people to accept, or even tolerate, the kind of shit I would expect on that forum.
If you're that hateful, go post on Stormfront. You'll be welcome over there, I believe. But, they DO have some rules that you'll have to abide by.
Funny - every community has rules to live by. Even a community of haters. Don't like the rules, go elsewhere, or make your own board.
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> Literally "I'm opposed to censorship BUT" post
> Give emotional justification "They REALLY piss me off"
> Infantalises opposing argument "kindergarden"
> Say moral majorty > speech rights "normal people to accept, or even tolerate"
> Mentions Stormfront
> Go somewhere else/Internet is private mall freedom excuse
Basically 90% of the main social justice cultism in one post. It sounds reasonable, but suddenly now we're all OK with censoring others on the internet, even if we don't participate
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The difference would be if i invited you to my house, let you drink all the beer you wanted, told you itll be like this always, then changed the rules.
THATS whats happening. Reddit was sold to a lot of people as a place you could express yourself freely. The creators stated as such. Now, as its gotten larger some people are upset because people who wanted free expression actually came, and it wasnt people THEY liked.
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Reddit was sold to a lot of people as a place you could express yourself freely. The creators stated as such. Now, as its gotten larger some people are upset because people who wanted free expression actually came, and it wasnt people THEY liked
Well that's just unacceptable. Reddit should offer those people a full refund of their membership fees!
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It's invariably the failing of a lot of new start-up product
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> There's a whole lot of stuff that most advertisers don't want to have their product associated with, so Reddit just wants to sweep all of that under the rug so they can present a shiny-clean image to the world
That seems ridiculous Statistically, NOBODY has a comprehensive understanding about all the subreddits that exist. There are literally too many to even visit them all. I didn't know about the ones being altered, nor did they list them all. Nobody has done a diff, because there's literally no way t
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Reddit has grown up. They started out with the naive position that there should be absolute freedom of speech. Then they realized that legally they couldn't do that, because for example posting links to illegal material like child pornography would get them into trouble. Later they realized that in order to allow debate there has to be some other limits, like no doxxing, no harassing people, no raids etc. More than that, if the most popular boards were all about hating fat people and black people, most folk
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A more fitting analogy would be:
You invited everyone over to your house to pay for beer in order to make you incredibly rich. You started throwing certain people out because of stupid comments they made. The rest of the guests who don't make highly offensive comments are now becoming wary of you and looking for other house parties to visit and spend their beer money at. But that's okay, because they're all misogynist rape-monster privileged shitlords. You can just sit in the garage with your headmates,
Top voted post of that thread, interesting point (Score:5, Informative)
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Came to post this.
Admins must be trollin'. There is absolutely no way they are not aware that SRS is the most toxic sub there is. They do more direct damage to individual users than every other sub combined. And not a peep from the admins. Double-U Tee Eff.
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The original post, right at the very top, explains this. Shame you scrolled down too fast to read it... I guess Reddit is like Slashdot, no-one reads TFS, just the headline.
The banned the boards that give them the most grief, and quarantined the most popular ones with objectionable content. The boards that were unaffected are either not causing their staff to waste a large proportion of their time on them, or they are not popular enough to bother quarantining.
Their approach is to simply deal with issues as
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I don't see how that contradicts the top post. What they are saying is that they want to improve Reddit generally by preventing block voting, rather than having to fire fight individual issues on certain subreddits.
Re:Top voted post of that thread, interesting poin (Score:5, Insightful)
The former got banned (according to the official explanation) not because of their ideas but because of the behaviour of their members (doxxing, harassing). The current batch was banned because (according to the official explanation) they "are banning a handful of communities that exist solely to annoy other redditors, prevent us from improving Reddit, and generally make Reddit worse for everyone else".
SRS exhibits the same behaviour that got FPH banned (brigading, harassing) and arguably exhibits the same behaviour that was used to justify the banishment of the current batch: existing "solely to annoy other redditors".
The above posted explanation from the admin admits SRS is a problem but only touches the brigading and anti brigading measures.
It gives the impression that existing "solely to annoy other redditors" was not the real reason for banning the current batch and that "doxxing and harassing" was not the real reason for banning FPH.
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Can you summarize the point? I read all you pasted and am still confused what the point is.
Slashdot: News for redditors by redditors. I've only stumbled across reddit a couple times, and so I also have no idea what the significance of any of that is, or why I should care.
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Because reddit is the largest news aggregation site on the Internet, and censorship on the internet, whether done by governments or private corporations, is a hot button issue.
Re:Top voted post of that thread, interesting poin (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Top voted post of that thread, interesting poin (Score:5, Informative)
Essentially, the commenter was complaining about a double-standard. Why are communities focused on hate for a group removed when other communities that focus on brigading (actively downvoting comments in a thread on a different community) and attacking people for their views. The OP posted a comment 4 years ago about r/rapingwomen and r/beatingwomen and how they should not be banned. This was in the context of reddit standing for freedom of speech. His logic was "if you want a truly free reddit, you can't ban communities like these, despite how terrible they may be." Someone dug up his comment, reposted it in ShitRedditSays, and people started attacking him from all angles - calling him a rapist, etc. He's feeling like reddit is picking and choosing which "harassing" subreddits are ok, and which aren't.
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As Reddit has explained, the criteria is not just the content, it's how visible the subreddit is and how much work it creates for Reddit staff. In the specific case of ShitRedditSays they prefer to work on a more general solution to brigading.
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Reddit lets some people brigade (SRS) while banning others. You can do anything you want as long as it agrees with their new direction.
Re:Top voted post of that thread, interesting poin (Score:5, Informative)
SRS (/r/shitredditsays) is a subreddit (forum) in which users post links to comments in other subreddits they find "offensive." The other users then follow that link to exact bloody revenge. And I mean bloody. They do not just "brigade" (which is also against the rules), downvoting en mass and posting insults. They go through somebody's post history and downvote everything they've ever said. They go farther still, "doxxing" people, breaking their pseudo-anonymity by going through their post history to try to uncover their real identity. Then they go further still, harassing that person in real life, and contacting their employer and trying to get them fired for opinions they expressed on the internet. It is the definition of harassment, in violation of the terms of the service of reddit and common human decency. Yet, SRS is never disciplined, never banned.
And in case you're wondering "well maybe these people deserve it!" No. Not by any stretch of the imagination. It's not like they're uncovering child abusers or something. They take anything that even maybe hints of "privilege" or insensitivity and spin horror stories out of whole cloth. In Warlizard's case (the guy who wrote the comment the GP reposted), he, talking about censorship, said that if reddit stands for "free speech" as they claim to, then no they shouldn't ban offensive subreddits like /r/rapingwomen. He goes on to say that if he had a private forum that he hosted, and someone made a subforum for that topic, he would ban it in a heartbeat because it's horrific and offensive. However, SRS took the first part of that and ran with it, called him a "rapist," followed him around, harassing him, and leaving nasty reviews on Amazon of the books he's authored.
They do this to lots of people. They want to be Social Justice Batman, but they're kind of like Batman if he were mentally retarded and high on crystal meth, programmed to punch anybody who utters certain words, regardless of context.
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They do this to lots of people. They want to be Social Justice Batman, but they're kind of like Batman if he were mentally retarded and high on crystal meth, programmed to punch anybody who utters certain words, regardless of context.
So, 'merica, fuck yeah?
Everyone knows Reddit is toxic. Why is this news?
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Re:Top voted post of that thread, interesting poin (Score:5, Interesting)
In Warlizard's case (the guy who wrote the comment the GP reposted), he, talking about censorship, said that if reddit stands for "free speech" as they claim to, then no they shouldn't ban offensive subreddits like /r/rapingwomen.... SRS took the first part of that and ran with it, called him a "rapist," followed him around, harassing him, and leaving nasty reviews on Amazon of the books he's authored.
I had something very much like that happen on reddit a few years back. I forget the context, because the context was so amazingly innocuous. It was something like: Someone said of a suspected child rapist, "This guy doesn't deserve rights. He should just be dragged out into the middle of town and beaten to death." to which I responded, "No, obviously everyone should get a trial. We don't know what happened or what extenuating circumstances there might have been, which is why we have trials."
There was no response for a couple of hours, and then my inbox got flooded with people threatening me. I found that someone had responded to my post claiming that I was defending child molesters, and therefore must be one. The response was upvoted a couple hundred times, and there were a bunch of responses like, "Yeah, this guy is a piece of shit. How dare he defend child molesters."
The whole thing was so insane to me that I didn't even bother responding. I immediately deleted my account. It was one of those moments that makes me a little terrified of the Internet. I don't know exactly why my post became a target, whether someone linked to it on another subreddit or something, but I was pretty disturbed by the experience. I had the distinct feeling that if any personal information had been associated with my account, I would have been harassed and possibly assaulted in real life, simply because I made the mistake of advocating for due process and rule of law in a public forum.
Oy Vey! (Score:3, Funny)
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Your rights end where my feelings begin! Shut it down, goyim!
Yep, Reddit's right to host whatever the hell it wants ends where the feelings of the inhabitants of /r/coontown begin!
Comment removed (Score:3)
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I agree in principle. I think more research needs to be done to find a way to "treat" (for lack of a better word) pedophiles (those who are sexually attracted to children) so they do not become molesters (those who act on their attraction). But we don't know for a fact that animated CP helps or hurts in that regard.
And in general, I'm fairly sure it's still illegal in the US. I didn't think it was the last time I had this discussion, but someone linked me to a case of a man who was imprisoned for importing
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If I had mod points, they'd be yours.
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Pedophiles have a disorder that's not of their choosing, and they should be helped to control their orientation by whatever means are available- therapy and finding an outlet for their urges. Persecuting them does nothing to help them or the community in which they reside. If persecution does anything, it drives them underground where they may be more likely to offend.
I know this is a "hot button" topic for many if not most people, but gays used to be treated similarly. Persecuting gay people
HERE'S AN IDEA... (Score:2, Insightful)
Why not allow the USER to decide what they do or do not want to see, rather than using corporate sponsored censorship? I dunno maybe some kind of "block list" they can set for their own account?
The point of free speech principles is that you can't protect the important speech without bringing along all forms of speech, even stupid ones, because the alternative is the slippery slope of censorship and deciding who should have the power to do it. But even in the ideal case, it is the right of *each person* to
Defending scoundrels (Score:5, Insightful)
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
— HL Mencken
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Except the scoundrels aren't under attack. If there were serious attempts to prevent said scoundrels from hosting/posting this stuff anywhere online, then yeah there would be a problem. Reddit doesn't want to spend money to give a platform to these people and that is 100% fine.
If these people want a platform they can pay for it themselves, for example by going over to Dreamhost. I have no affiliation except that they host several small websites of mine. For a rather small amount of money per year they will
Re:Defending scoundrels (Score:4, Insightful)
...and this is how it begins. Once people have been judged to be so disgusting as to be beyond any protection,
You didn't read my post. They're not beyond protection. The law still allows them to be scoundrels and there are many, many places which will host them, some free, some not.
Like I said already in the post of mine which you clearly didn't read: if they were under attack there would be a problem. But they're not.
Or do you think the solution is to force reddit to host them? If not reddit then why not my small forum?
Quick question: when in history has this ever happened before, and how did it turn out?
You mean at what times in history did people reserve the right to eject people from private places for being obnoxious? Just about throghout the entirety of recorded history. How did it turn out? absolutely fine.
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I will see your H.L. Mencken and raise you a Karl Popper:
"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. – In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by r
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It blows my mind that someone would be able to read that paragraph without an ominous chill going down their spine. What hes really saying is, "some people have disgusting philosophies that are at the same time difficult to unseat. Therefore we should have the right to deem them outside the law so that such dangerous ideas do not proliferate."
The very notion that there are "dangerous ideas" that cannot be allowed is chilling, moreso because some apparently believe it.
PC Echo chamber (Score:2, Insightful)
Slowly but surely, Reddit has deliberately reformed itself to be a politically correct echo chamber. The policies only touch those who voice politically incorrect opinions. This is nothing more than thought policing.
This will ultimately be its undoing, and will significantly improve the quality of discussion in whatever follows, as the signal to noise ratio will be considerably higher when the usual parrots are left to their own devices.
This kind of behavior is normal in media once it reaches certain trac
Reddit technology monopoly (Score:5, Funny)
If Reddit shuts off the supply, how will anyone express an opinion on the internet? Nobody has the capability to reverse engineer the decades or proprietary research and technology that enables posting comments on an internet forum.
Its their site (Score:2)
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at least its not hot grits.
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Never thought I'd be nostalgic for Slashdot trolls.
Re:Obviously. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Just because it's not government censorship doesn't mean it's not censorship. It's legal, because Reddit doesn't owe anyone the use of the site to say what the owners of Reddit don't want to be said, and you may even agree with them, because after all they did start by banning truly despicable stuff, but it's still censorship.
There's this old joke that has been attributed to many famous people:
A man asks a woman if she would be willing to sleep with him if he pays her an exorbitant sum. She replies affirmat
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http://dictionary.reference.co... [reference.com]
http://dictionary.reference.co... [reference.com]
But the other patrons cannot hear the conversation (Score:2)
Somebody will always be annoyed about something. Are they going to ban religion or atheism boards next? If they want to protect sensitive ears, then they should set-up an opt-in flag that will hide inflammatory reddts from searches and casual browsing.
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If they want to protect sensitive ears, then they should set-up an opt-in flag that will hide inflammatory reddts from searches and casual browsing.
Sound slike that is exactly what they are doing with the quarantine feature, where you have to explicitly opt-in to see the content.
Re:Obviously. (Score:4, Insightful)
To carry your analogy further, your restaurant would have to be called "Anything Goes" and be launched on the idea that anyone can say anything and that freedom of speech is paramount - superseding all other concerns. The press interview you and have you on record saying that you're proud of the restaurant being a place that is uncensored and self-moderating (in that if people don't like the conversation at a table they are welcome to move to another), with each table out of earshot of all other tables, thus underlining how accepting of all opinions your restaurant is. Jump forward to the present and if you're surprised that patrons are upset that you're banning certain conversations on the basis that you don't like them, perhaps you shouldn't have opened this kind of restaurant in the first place.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09... [nytimes.com]
sauce for the goose and all. It's a pretty grey area, but in my mind, people are reddit's customers, and reddit is serving as a mass messaging tool/communication device.
we already have protection in the US that protect voice calls from tampering by phone companies.
How comfortable would you be with comcast screening your traffic?
reddit has the right to refuse service, just as comcast does, just as verizon does. should they though?
corporate self-censorship is so much more in
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> I have a right to ask them to leave, correct?
Sure you do, but stop claiming your restaurant is a bastion of free speech.
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Actually if you own a shopping mall in the USA and a self-appointed preacher enters and starts to sermon about the end of world being nigh, you have to tolerate that. Since the mall floor is open to the general public, including those who just want to admire the shop window displays for free, you can't discriminate
That's total bullshit. If that were true, there's be tons of preachers at malls every night, bothering shoppers. No, the mall does not have to tolerate that; that's why they have private securit