Reddit Continues To Protect Racist Language In Favor of Free Speech (digitaltrends.com) 661
In a thread about Reddit's 2017 transparency report, a user asked CEO Steve Huffman whether posts containing racism or racial slurs violate Reddit's terms. Huffman revealed that said speech are permissible on the site. "On Reddit, the way in which we think about speech is to separate behavior from beliefs," Huffman clarified. "This means on Reddit there will be people with beliefs different from your own, sometimes extremely so." Digital Trends reports: It's unclear if Huffman's comments are representative of Reddit's company policy, but protection of hate speech can -- and do -- lead to online harassment and cyberbullying. A recent study from Pew revealed that as many as 40 percent of Americans have experienced some form of harassment online. And even if hate speech may still be protected content on Reddit, Huffman was quick to point out that any threat of violence is not tolerated on the site. "When users actions conflict with our own content policies, we take action," he said. This distinction is consistent with Reddit's prior policies for enforcement. "Going forward, we will take action against any content that encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence or physical harm against an individual or a group of people; likewise we will also take action against content that glorifies or encourages the abuse of animals," the updated terms read, noting that "context is key."
ALL SPEECH.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:ALL SPEECH.... (Score:5, Insightful)
... protected from government censoring in the US.
Added some context.
Re:ALL SPEECH.... (Score:4, Insightful)
>... protected from government censoring in the US.
>
> Added some context.
Let me add some more. In the US, liberty is though of as something that government doesn't need to "give" to you. It exists as part of your natural condition. The Constitution exists to define the limits of government. It does not enumerate your rights.
You are demonstrating that you simply don't care about the principle at large. YOU are why we need laws protecting us from evil men that would do us harm. YOU would do us harm otherwise.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I was demonstrating that some people don't live in the US.
You are demonstrating how to build a strawman and get angry on the internet.
Re: ALL SPEECH.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know why I even bother using slashdot anymore. There is no nuance to the discourse.
Although I suspect you deliberately chose to misunderstand me I'll indulge you.
I'm not saying that matters relating to free speech don't affect people outside the US. I was trying to highlight the fact that Reddit extends beyond the US and approaching this problem with a US-centric view will not make it easy to find a broader solution.
Now do everyone a favour: Stop jumping at the opportunity to feign outrage and start taking a moment to consider whether your contributions to the discussion are more than just noise.
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Let me add some more. In the US, liberty is though of as something that government doesn't need to "give" to you. It exists as part of your natural condition. The Constitution exists to define the limits of government. It does not enumerate your rights.
I wish more people understood this.
You are demonstrating that you simply don't care about the principle at large.
I think that's a little unfair to assume about the GP. It seemed to me that they were just clarifying that the protections in the Constitution limit on they government.
YOU are why we need laws protecting us from evil men that would do us harm. YOU would do us harm otherwise.
YOU should know better than this. So many laws "protecting us from evil men that would do us harm" is a big part of the reason we're continually moving toward a police state.
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In the US, liberty is though of as something that government doesn't need to "give" to you. It exists as part of your natural condition.
liberty as a natural condition. huh. How about the limits to freedom ? My freedom ends where yours begins ... My freedom to punch you ends where your liberty to be unharmed begins. This is where government comes in: to define and protect those borders.
Re:ALL SPEECH.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Curious.
Does your definition of "liberty" include forcing privately-owned and operated Web sites to carry and publish material that the proprietors may fundamentally disagree with?
Would the proprietors of these Web sites fall under your definition of "evil men that would do us harm" if they attempted to establish and enforce their own principles on their own private property?
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Yes, this is what the brochure says, but if it was really true, why is it acceptable for the government to restrict the rights of non-citizens?
Like GP said, the constitution doesn't enumerate rights. Among other things, non-citizens are not given the right to vote, and the right to hold political office. Good luck finding a country that does allow these things. Furthermore, SCOTUS has, on many occasions, denied i.e. 4th amendment rights to foreign nationals on foreign soil.
If rights truly are endowed by the Creator, and if "all men" are equal in the eyes of that Creator, then don't all men qualify equally?
Much of what is written in the declaration of independence isn't reflected in the constitution, furthermore, the declaration isn't written as a binding law, rather it's written
Some real context (Score:2, Troll)
What the government explicitly allows for, should not private institutions seek to uphold?
If it's only the government that allows ALL speech, and all private sources block some speech - do you really have freedom of speech? Or is it just just an archaic term that means nothing?
The whole point of these protections is they are supposed to be GUIDING PRINCIPALS by which the people of the U.S. live. That includes how we treat others. It doesn't mean everyone has to allow everything, but it DOES mean that we
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What the government explicitly allows for, should not private institutions seek to uphold?
Hell, no. Do you want a Christian institution to seek to uphold Atheist or Muslim speech in their congregations, when the government explicitly allows for freedom of religion?
If it's only the government that allows ALL speech, and all private sources block some speech - do you really have freedom of speech?
Yes, you do. You have the right to say what you want, but you have no right to stand on my soapbox when doing so. If all the soap boxes are owned by someone who won't let you speech, then you need to either build your own soap box, or find a different way to get your voice heard. The onus is on you, not the soap box owners.
Also, yo
You misread (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell, no. Do you want a Christian institution to seek to uphold Atheist or Muslim speech in their congregations
Of course not, but that is not at all what I said.
You have the right to say what you want, but you have no right to stand on my soapbox when doing so.
And what *I* am saying, is that if I choose to let someone on MY Soapbox you have not right to knock it out from under them, and are morally wrong to try.
Re:ALL SPEECH.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:ALL SPEECH.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:ALL SPEECH.... (Score:5, Funny)
All wedding cakes are gay.
Re:ALL SPEECH.... (Score:4, Funny)
And just how do you know they prefer other wedding cakes? Have you observed their mating rituals?
I always wondered where cupcakes came from...
Re:ALL SPEECH.... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not the same thing.
Okay, look, as a business of public accommodation (a business open to the public), they are required to not discriminate against customers. That is to say, they are not allowed to refuse service to a customer on the sole reason of that customer falling in a protected class.
Federally protected classes include, but are not limited to, race, age, sex, national origin or ancestry, religion or creed, and physical or mental disability. (I may have missed a couple in there.)
States are allowed to add to the federal list, but they are not allowed to remove anything from the federal list. In the state that the "gay wedding cake" occurred in, sexual orientation is also a protected class. So, the bakery in question was not allowed to deny them service solely on that basis.
Now, if the bakery had been booked solid, and would have been unable to produce the wedding cake by the time of the wedding, and they'd denied service based on that? Not discrimination.
If the bakery didn't do wedding cakes at all, as in it wasn't a service they offered, and had denied service based on that? Not discrimination.
Now, Reddit probably doesn't count as a business of public accommodation. While anyone can read most Reddit posts, you have to login to comment. It requires membership to access certain services. They are free to set the Terms and Conditions under which they will allow those services. And they are free to say what constitutes a violation of those Terms and Services. (Although, let's face it, while they should be consistent in that application, it's practically impossible to prove that.)
Re:ALL SPEECH.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay, look, as a business of public accommodation (a business open to the public), they are required to not discriminate against customers.
SCOTUS has yet to rule on that (they will do so later this year) but there are a few objections I have to this:
- The customer is giving their money to somebody who hates them and demanding that they take their money. Seriously, why would you do this? I'd boycott them if anything.
- There is a word in the English language for forcing somebody to perform a service against their will.
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They never had any intention of consuming the cake. People have mapped it out, the Gay couple drove past something like a dozen other bakeries specifically to target this one because they are such screeching blue haired drama queens that they cannot physically function without calling inordinate amounts attention to themselves. The news made it out to seem like it was a surprise that the bakery wouldn't serve them, but that bakery had a well established reputation by then. The bakery was targeted because of
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So, I took your post and replaced the word Gay with a different protected class to see if it passed the smell test:
They never had any intention of consuming the cake. People have mapped it out, the Black couple drove past something like a dozen other bakeries specifically to target this one because they are such screeching blue haired drama queens that they cannot physically function without calling inordinate amounts attention to themselves. The news made it out to seem like it was a surprise that the bakery wouldn't serve them, but that bakery had a well established reputation by then. The bakery was targeted because of their religious beliefs, it's the very definition of discrimination but because it's cool to be black , the other protected class won this round.
Honestly, I am pretty sure the only way this sounds ok is if you don't believe that gay people are entitled to the same protections black people are. By the way, assuming your description of the situation is accurate, this is the model used during the civil rights movement. Groups of african americans would specifically target businesses knows not to serve people like them and hold sit ins at
Re: ALL SPEECH.... (Score:3)
"Corporations are people" is not just someting an old, rich, white, out-of-touch guy says. It's actually the law of the land. For the most part, the rights of individuals is transitively applied to groups of individuals. It's not hard to figure out why; if you are concerned with freedom of speech and assembly, you can see how the rights of corporations (groups of people) must be protected as well.
Re:ALL SPEECH.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Free speech protects you from the GOVERNMENT, genius.
Free speech is a fundamental human right. The First Amendment specifically protects you against government taking away that right, sure, because that's the scope of the Amendments: protecting you from the government. But free speech remains a fundamental human right in any context.
There is no right not to be offended though. The only free speech that matters is speech that offends you.
Free speech was enshrined because we considered it useful, because the concept came from a time when you had to stand up for what you say, you couldn't just spew hate speech anonymously without consequence.
This is what kids learn instead of history? I blame the schools. FYI, anonymous pamphleteering filled with every kind of slur and insult was common then, and some of the Founding Fathers were busy printing some pretty vile shit to smear Royalists with.
So what if we reexamine the concept of free speech and whether or not it's serving a good cause?
Sure, it's always good to re-examine core beliefs. But I come to the same conclusion: free speech is a fundamental human right, while taking offense at speech is your problem.
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Free speech is a fundamental right and I am all about any person saying what ever they want. However, it is up to you to send your message, and no one else has to provide you with a platform.
Sure, right up until that private service effectively becomes the common forum.
Print all the anonymous pamphlets you want, on your press, I do not have to provide it for you.
Sure - unless you're the primary public forum. There's a reason the broadcast networks used to be bound by "equal time" laws, when other media never were.
Perhaps you also want to argue that we need to favor the speech of the historically oppressed? That free speech is violence? That free speech threatens a stable society (totalitarian regimes love that one)? We can walk through all the stale arguments used through the centuri
Re:ALL SPEECH.... (Score:5, Informative)
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"I believe God made man and woman to be with each other" is not hate, it is religion. If you interpret that as hate, that's in your head.
"I don't believe in making women cover themselves in sheets or requiring them to have male escorts" is the opposite of hate.
The list goes on. If you feel hate where none exists, that's all on you. I am not responsible for navigating around the minefield of other people's mental states.
And regardless...people are entitled to their opinions. No one gets to reach i
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I disagree whole hardhearted. Its their money, its their Site. Dont like it? go make your own hate/lawful activity allowing site..
Until the hosting company pulls the plug ... or the ISP refuses to connect people to you ... or the domain registrar dumps you ...
I don't know what the solution is; just saying it's not as simple a problem as that.
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Unless you're a baker. Then the government can force you to use your artistic skills against your own first amendment rights.
But that is okay.
Re:ALL SPEECH.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: ALL SPEECH.... (Score:5, Insightful)
While the distinction is appreciated, in the USA the government is us. A government of the people. We should not be censoring each other. If we don't like the words, we don't have to read them.
No the distinction is VERY important because we SHOULD be censoring each other. We have no obligation to put up with things we don't like. If I find words in a book (that I own) that I don't like. I'm perfectly allowed to burn that book. That's censorship. But it's not the government. The book can still be found on bookshelves in other people's homes and I can't demand that city hall forced bookstores to remove it and burn all copies.
That is why the distinction is important. A bookstore can find all copies of the book and burn it. They can't make the government force me to turn my copy back into the bookstore and burn my copy. Again the distinction is important. We're all allowed to censor. We ARE NOT the government. We are allowed freedoms that the government can not be allowed to have. I can kick you out of my home for being a Protestant. I can kick you out of my home for being a woman. The government can not do that.
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Yes, the Disney Channel isn't obligated to air your homemade porn, but as a service they don't air outside content anyway.
Reddit accepts people's posts. They've decided not to censor racist language. It's good that somebody doesn't.
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It's because one thing is something someone DOES and the other is something someone IS. Judging people for what they do is fine, IMHO. Judging someone because the universe gave them brown skin is silly and counter-productive unless you are evaluating their sun protection. Judging someone because they have an ancestor from the banks of the Rhine is silly unless you are evaluating them for colon cancer.
Another way to view it is in terms of classical rights: you should be free to associate with whomever you wi
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Only from government censure (Score:2)
Re:ALL SPEECH.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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>> Also hatespeech is an implicit threat. If you can't respect another human's right to exist or their civil rights as a citizen, your beliefs are inherently threatening to any demographic targeted by it
> It is also a concept that applies to society's handling of ideas
And most societies have come to the conclusion that threats are not a valid form of free speech.
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Whether you're talking about "free speech" as a legal concept or a moral concept, it only extends to your right to say something. You can say what you want. However, your right to say what you want doesn't mean other people should be forced to agree, or even listen. It doesn't mean that other people are obligated to promote your speech or provide you with a platform. It doesn't free you from the practical consequences of your speech.
If you post something on reddit, regardless of the content, I'm not ob
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Whether you're talking about "free speech" as a legal concept or a moral concept, it only extends to your right to say something. [...] It doesn't mean that other people are obligated to promote your speech or provide you with a platform.
You mean like a wedding cake?
You see, this is where the argument breaks down - either the government forces all businesses to allow all legal speech, or the government allows all businesses to determine what speech they want to allow on businesses platform/cake.
Any in between turns into the government picking the winners of any argument, by allowing only certain arguments to be made.
You know, there's a reason that the hard-left gave rise to Hitler. It's because they were in such a fucking hurry to shutdo
Re: ALL SPEECH.... (Score:2, Flamebait)
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We got Trump because the leftist media made him their darling during the primaries, the GOPe backed that milksop Jeb when republicans really don't like dynastic tendencies, and the democrats fielded possibly their worst and most unlikable candidate ever.
Re:ALL SPEECH.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Thats not how the leftists think. The leftists think its all about power and the government is power. Nothing else but power matters to them.
Oh, please. Everyone thinks that, not just leftists. Rightists want to use the power of government to tell people whom they can marry, whom they can have sex with and when, and whether or not they can have an abortion or use birth control. Everybody wants to rule the world.
Re:ALL SPEECH.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Everyone thinks that, not just leftists
I'm a libertarian. I don't think like that, not by a long shot. But then again, I'm a fringe element that views Statism (both left and right) with a vile contempt, and abuser of liberties for the purposes of control.
Liberty is messy, and dangerous. I just want people to recognize safety is not something worth giving up liberty for.
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The left CLAIMS to protect the weak from the strong. But uses strongman tactics for any slight (real or imaginary). Take for example the Left wanting to ban Diamond and Silk from Facebook for being a "danger" to our social structure. Or rioting over speakers on college campuses because they view the speakers as "evil" for simply having a different framework of thought. Or forcing a baker to the will of the state sponsored group think. Taking from one group and giving to another without regard the force requ
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Fun part being that the opposite is most likely true. Progressive women are not breeding in anything close to replenishment level, in fact doing the exact opposite. Openly declaring that they will not breed at all, because there are too many people. While those people who do breed well don't just abhor their values - they think their values need to be beaten out of them. With sticks and whips. As they do across the world today to people like them.
So future generations are likely to come from the latter kind
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Are you a Christian? Would you be fine with it if a shop owner told you he doesn't sell his wares to Christians? Only to, say, Muslims? What if you lived in a small town and the 3 shop owners in the town in addition to the barber decided to not sell any wares or services to Christians, would you be fine with that, too?
Are you white? What if you stopped at a gas station and the owner, a black man, told you "sorry, we don't serve white men". Would that be totally okay to you? Even if your car had to town away? Do you really it would some kind of crime if the law forced this gas station owner to sell to white men, too?
Why is all of that suddenly okay when Google, Facebook and Twitter do it?
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Free speech doesn't mean only the speech you like (Score:5, Insightful)
So why are you making it sound like it's a bad thing?
Re:Free speech doesn't mean only the speech you li (Score:4, Insightful)
Because all the SJW's are too dumb to realize the "hate speech" laws they want passed can be turned right around against themselves.
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Nobody should have a problem with not giving Marxists a public forum. Or Stalinists. Or Nazis. Very loosely paraphrasing Sir Karl Popper, there is no need at all to be tolerant to intolerant people. On the contrary, you have to fight them actively and one reasonable and legitimate means of doing that is to not give them public forums and advertisement platforms.
It's really pretty simple and kind of sad how so many conservative people in the US seem to have lost their moral compass:
* tolerant people who supp
Count Dankula (Score:5, Insightful)
It also doesn't mean you get to shout fire (Score:3)
Furthermore Free Speech is about what the government does. It's not censorship if a private corporation doesn't want to do business with Stormfront or the like. Racist is not a protected class, and unless you're arguing it should be you have to live with the
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He's choosing which speech to protect.
Speech that people disagree with he's comfortable with. Speech that damages his business, less so. Speech that breaks the law, oddly enough he'll do his best to prevent.
That doesn't mean he isn't protecting speech, it just means the world is rather nuanced. I disagree that he's found a good balance, but that doesn't mean it's a binary scenario.
So does Slashdot. (Score:5, Insightful)
So what? Free speech is preferable to censorship.
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Slashdot admins don't censor stuff*, but moderators certainly do try to hide views they disagree with.
Reddit is in some ways a little better because it shows almost all comments by default and up votes seem to be much more common and down-votes. Neither system is perfect.
* Actually you can't post the n-word here.
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Then you should meta-mod more often. People who abuse modpoints soon find themselves getting none anymore.
Re:So does Slashdot. (Score:4, Funny)
* Actually you can't post the n-word here.
shuttup nigger
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Yeah, that's a great thread. At least we don't have that here.
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That's up to the mods of the specific subreddit. Not reddit itself.
Remember that each subreddit belongs to the mods, and reddit wants to take no responsibility for moderation. The saga of the_donald made that quite clear.
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Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it is the most repellent speech that MUST be protected, or 'freedom of speech' means nothing.
Adults understand that words only "hurt" people that allow them to.
(To be clear, Reddit's is their META policy; subreddits are allowed to have whatever policies their founders choose, really.)
Re:Good (Score:4, Informative)
Surprised to see you saying that, since you were so upset when they banned subreddits like FatPeopleHate and CoonTown.
Reddit's approach is sensible. The problem was never the language, it was never a free speech issue, it was that those subreddits were harassing people.
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Considering I I don't recalll ever hearing of those subreddits, I'm not sure what you're talking about?
FWIW if they did ban those subreddits, then they're not following their own policy - if racist speech is allowed, and CoonTown sounds pretty damned racist, they should have left it up.
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Zero-tolerance (Score:2)
Sounds like they don't want to implement a zero-tolerance policy, and want to give themselves the "context" excuse so they can still take action against people who are unruly and terrible. If only our schools and legislatures were run by these people.
Neither of these are problems (Score:5, Insightful)
In America, "Hate Speech" and "cyberbullying" aren't illegal because they aren't codified as crimes.
There is no statute for hate speech to follow, likewise for cyberbullying.
Your expectation that a corporation or organization can somehow match up to your own personal definitions and expectations is completely childish and unproductive.
If you want these things to be stopped, talk to your members of congress and get a law passed.
Until then, kindly shut up about your pretend crimes.
Thanks,
The internet.
Re:Neither of these are problems (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a difference, though, between harassment and disagreement. Unfortunately, people can't tell the difference between someone who harasses them and someone who disagrees with their batshit insanity.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Speech is not the same as action (Score:5, Insightful)
And with free speech eroding on the internet and in general, what is next? Tought police?
UK already has that. You can go to jail for a Facebook post with unapproved opinions.
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It's our hard right conservative government. They pay lip service to freedom of expression but if it wasn't for the European Convention on Human Rights (soon to be scrapped post-Brexit) they'd do away with it tomorrow.
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Mel Brooks (Score:5, Insightful)
Mel Brooks made a brilliant, funny and subversive movie back in the 70s called "Blazing Saddles". The reason why it made it so subversive was that he used all these racial slurs and vulgar adolescent humor to paint the racist town folks as being quite stupid and ignorant.
When one see the butchered for television version that removes everything that can offend anyone, it loses its edge and point.
Folks are too easily offended and I think many folks really aren't - they just like the power trip of shutting others up. Just a bunch of PC retards.
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If you take away everything that could offend someone from Blazing Saddles, what's left is little more than a 2-minute trailer.
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If you take away everything that could offend someone from Blazing Saddles, what's left is little more than a 2-minute trailer.
It's twoo! It's twoo!
RIP, Clevon Little.
"some form" (Score:5, Insightful)
Around four-in-ten Americans (41%) have been personally subjected to at least one type of online harassment – which this report defines as offensive name-calling online
Whenever you see some statistic like "40 percent of Americans have experienced some form of harassment online" you know they have jiggered the definition to inflate the numbers. By the report's definition, probably everyone on /. is a "victim".
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Yeah, someone recently replied to a post of mine and dared to disagree. I felt so abused!
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Oh, it just means "someone said mean things?" Wow, sounds awful, we should make a law against that.
What's the alternative? (Score:2)
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True, I'll accept racist language as the price of a free society, but when said language devolves into threats of violence, the "free speech" claim is lost and action needs to be taken.
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Re: seems like some clarification is in order. (Score:2)
Choice (Score:2, Informative)
It's simple. If you don't like Reddit's terms and policies, you can use some other website that matches what you want. There are a whole bunch out there.
If you want nearly unlimited freedom of speech you can go to one of the chans. If you want something more locked-down you can post to the somewhat ironically named freethoughtblogs. There are all kinds of communities you can be a part of. Or with a tiny bit of technical know-how, you can create your own. Isn't it great?
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On one hand, I very much agree with your argument and position.
On the other, though, there are maybe a few dozen sites at most that have become the town square. Facebook, Redit, etc ARE the electronic town square now. That is where speech happens. Yes, they are privately owned, but that is the only place where one can go and be heard.
What I fear the most is that due to the monopolistic control of our virtual town squares is that they can (and already to some extent, are) be used to exert undo control ove
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I would amend your statement to read, "they want to maximize engagement as long as it advances their own agenda, whether that agenda be societal, financial, or simply raw power".
Thus, I do think that there are wide swaths of "speech" that are now considered not only disagreeable and offensive to the hearer, but "hate speech" or "inciteful speech" or even "physically harmful speech". This 1984-esque use of synonyms that change the meaning of basic words, and hence the way we think about the concepts that th
Intelligent response by Reddit (Score:2)
Behavior can be a problem: screaming racial slurs at a group before attacking them.
Some things are not a problem, but are sort of distasteful: screaming racial slurs at a group.
Other things are actually useful: logical discussion of race, ethnicity, and whether or not diversity is functional at all.
"hate speech" is an artificial construct. (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no need to protect non-offensive speech. (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no need to protect non-offensive speech.
No one is going to go after speech that they agree with. It is only speech with which we don't agree that is in need of protection. Because if we don't, eventually, someone who doesn't agree with us is going to prevent us from speaking.
It really is that simple.
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So, they're going after "incendiary speech" not because they don't agree with it, but because....?
And who gets to draw this line between "offensive" and "incendiary"?
bill_mcgonigle (Score:5, Interesting)
Reddit has been shutting down many, many subreddits recently.
They are taking responsibility for user-generated content, and once they do that they don't get to only take responsibility for some.
I think it would have been much smarter for Reddit to remain neutral and claim "common-carrier" status, but their virtue-signaling management wouldn't have it.
I hear Voat.co is where the banned communities are going and their stack happens to still be open source, so that's an additional level of transparency.
I'm in favor of Reddit's policy. (Score:4, Insightful)
Nothing wrong with protecting speech, even reprehensible speech. I'd probably be labeled an SJW on /. (which has the highest number of Gamergaters and Trumpers of any community I interact with), but I'm a libertarian. I believe in free speech, even shitty speech. Unless someone is specifically attacking an individual, or calling for violence, it's protected speech in my opinion.
Reddit has specifically banned several subreddits over speech-type grounds, but they have all been areas that specifically attacked individuals, called for violence, or engaged in unlawful activity (or really-narrowly-lawful-if-you-don't-look-too-closely-but-it's-a-gray-area like technically-SFW ephibophilia image sharing). They are moderating in the least harmful way they can and still stay within the law, and that's exactly what they should be doing.
I'm all for Reddit's policies, and I applaud their restraint. They protect speech they don't like, and that's exactly the American way.
"Protects racist speech". GOOD! (Score:3)
I'm not a fan of racist speech.
I think it's disgusting. And, like an adult, I avoid partaking in it myself.
But the idea that offensive speech OF ANY STRIPE is somehow "not protected" by Free Speech is INSANE.
Offense is taken, not given.
If you don't like the speech being presented to you, be an adult.
Change the channel. Leave. Argue against it.
But bitching to the government to shut someone up, no matter HOW ignorant the things they say are, is wrong.
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Because it also lets people find out that they're not the only one who thinks differently than the government.
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Because free speech allows people to find that there are other around them with the same grievances, which tends to snowball rather quickly if any such grievances are widely shared and significant enough to get people to oppose the government.
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Cyber bullying is more than just name calling. It's a combination of stalking, harassing and slander. It's also way easier to do than trying it in real life simply because the exposure is heaps bigger and it's easier to have a lasting negative impact on someone's life.
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the /. mods will happily let them stand
Perhaps you don't understand how the Slashdot moderation system works. We are the moderators. And you are free to mod down any comments that you feel are trolling, incitefull or just off topic.
structural racism
I don't see anything in the design of Slashdot that excludes any particular group. In fact, we don't even require that you identify yourself by race or gender anymore. So there is nothing about this forum that excludes anyone.
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You think that's shocking? I always suspected the hate-mongers would have delusions when it came to who to suppress. I doesn't surprise me at all, I mean, these people have to have some mental issues to openly hate a group of people. I get that they see a trend and are quick to judge, but exposing such bullshit, I really didn't have faith that they would be internally consistent.
The shocker came when my own party started lashing out against free speech. Like they don't remember the hippies getting silenced