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Imzy wants to be a kinder, gentler version of Reddit

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Re: Imzy wants to be a kinder, gentler version of Reddit

#141

Post by reitanqild »

Retra wrote: post #137
gkya wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No right is limitless. I don't know about other countries but in elementary school where I am we're taught a person's freedom is limited by the freedoms of others , and freedom of speech is certainly limited by other people's human rights, including the right to human dignity. AFAIK the declaration of human rights include that right. There is no freedom without responsibility, and that's why people who aren't or can'…

Elementary school is not the place to learn about the subtleties of human cultural conflict.

A good starting point though.

Re: Imzy wants to be a kinder, gentler version of Reddit

#142

Post by matt4077 »

Noos wrote: post #134

Places like this tend to show the hypocrisy of the average leftist when it comes to free speech, though. When free speech benefits them by weakening social norms (especially religious ones), they champion it, but the moment free speech starts to subvert the new liberal norms they put in to replace it, suddenly we get arguments about how free speech is a limited concept and pleas to rediscover civility and tolerance.…

To a large part the difference is what comedians call "punching up" vs. "punching down" – Making fun of born-again christians is a bit more legitimate because they're 40% of the (US) population and have an insane amount of power compared to the hardcore atheists insulting them. It's quite different from being a muslim in a predominantly christian country being subjected to abuse by the majority.

It's also a bit more legitimate because those radical atheists usually come from within the society they're criticizing. Not always in the sense of having been devoted christians themselves, but just being white and born in the US means you're more of the "in-group" of a white christian than others.

I'd also like to mention that you're operating from a stereotype of "average leftists" that I feel is overly broad. What you see on tumblr (or what you see when someone shares a screenshot that looks like tumblr) is far away from the average. Regarding uber, check this 500-comment threat to see that there are many people on HN critical of their business practices, especially in regards of drivers' rights and wellbeing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9731963

Re: Imzy wants to be a kinder, gentler version of Reddit

#143

Post by matt4077 »

aaron695 wrote: post #18

I guess most of the world could live in safe spaces like this? But for the creators and doers it's horrific. We move forward by being challenged. That includes everything. (until AI has the ability to filter out things that challenge but don't move us forward)

Have you actually /been/ to reddit in the last year? The idea that anything of value is created by this raging mob of hateful teenagers with too much free time is laughable.

FFS, they've just spent a month riling each other up about a Clinton/Podesta pedophile ring operating out of an italian restaurant. That may be "challenging" for some of them (because letters etc.), but it's not the stuff the next breakthrough in physics will be based on.

Re: Imzy wants to be a kinder, gentler version of Reddit

#144

Post by derefr »

andrewflnr wrote: post #125
derefr wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with Reddit (the company) is that it chooses to represent its service as a single community, and thus allows all of its communities to be tarred by the same brush. If Reddit was more like, say, StackExchange, or Wordpress.com, or Discourse—a hosting site for "communities" which happened to use the "Reddit engine"—then it wouldn't have nearly the PR problem it has now. Nobody blames Wordpress.com for the c…

I think reddit accurately represents the fact that both factors are present, lots of specific communities and also a larger reddit-wide community. At least I was never confused about that.

Right, it's clear enough "from the inside" as an experienced user. But from the outside, people (e.g. journalists) just talk about "Reddit" as one place. Reddit Corp issues administrative policies for the site as if in complete ignorance of this public perception.

There is a reason WordPress has the .com/.org split, and it's not just that large customers demand to self-host. That could have resulted in something more like GitHub Enterprise, but instead you see a well-supported FOSS offering. Why? Because this split allows WordPress.com to maintain a very strict TOS that disallows many types of content, while still allowing other people who don't want to adhere to those policies to "run on WordPress" easily by using the WordPress.org software either directly or through third-party hosts.

If Reddit was smart, the "Reddit engine" would be a well-supported, easy to install FOSS offering like WordPress.org, and there would be a healthy ecosystem of third-party hosts running that software. Voat would just be "Yet Another Reddit-as-Service Provider", instead of a competitor and political statement.

As it is, the Reddit engine is an effectively-unsupported blob of code that needs tons of other heavy dependencies to get it running. The only site I know running a copy of the Reddit engine is LessWrong—and they've heavily forked it for their own purposes.

Re: Imzy wants to be a kinder, gentler version of Reddit

#145

Post by reitanqild »

BEEdwards wrote: post #29

Lot's "but this isn't free speech" in here, but that's exactly the point, free speech has been tried and it leads to shit holes like reddit and voat. Places you might visit, but wouldn't recommend or even admit to using in a mixed group. People talk about free speech like it's some goal, but in reality all people seem to do with it is make fun of fat people and post stolen naked pictures of celebrities. When confront…

Am I the only one who finds lots and lots of good stuff on forums etc?

My wife is annoyed because I spend time here but just because of the time I spend not because of anything that shows up on my screen; most of the bad stuff people write about just doesn't seem to cross my path.

:-/

Re: Imzy wants to be a kinder, gentler version of Reddit

#146

Post by davidivadavid »

jasode wrote: post #122
yummyfajitas wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is more to the idea of free speech than simply the first amendment. This essay explains it well: http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/29/the-spirit-of-the-first... The general gist is: imagine a world where women who advocate for suffrage and women's rights are ostracized from society, rejected from conferences and fired from their jobs. Those of us who favor a broader concept of free speech feel this is a bad sta…

>imagine a world where women who advocate for suffrage and women's rights are [...], rejected from conferences Your expanded idea of free speech is noble but it's not possible for society to provide. Free speech allowed by the government is possible. Free speech hosted and paid for by private commercial entities is impossible -- in any long-term sustaining way. The "free speech on commercial entities" would require 2…

1) The fact that they're paying for speech they disagree with isn't necessarily bad for business. Whether it causes them to lose funding/revenue is a business problem that doesn't seem inherently unsolvable. Does reddit increase or shrink their ad revenue when they decide to drop a controversial subreddit? To take the example in your other post, there's probably a bunch of offensive groups on Facebook. Does P&G threaten to stop advertising on FB? What about non-ad-based revenue models?

2) Not sure why that follows at all.

Re: Imzy wants to be a kinder, gentler version of Reddit

#147

Post by jasode »

makomk wrote: post #138
jasode wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>imagine a world where women who advocate for suffrage and women's rights are [...], rejected from conferences Your expanded idea of free speech is noble but it's not possible for society to provide. Free speech allowed by the government is possible. Free speech hosted and paid for by private commercial entities is impossible -- in any long-term sustaining way. The "free speech on commercial entities" would require 2…

Not everything has to be a law. For example, one could imagine a world where the social norm was that services embodied some more generalized idea of free speech, and people are reluctant to use services that don't do this because one day it's likely to be used against them. Instead, the press are pushing the opposite social norm, that sites are somehow morally obligated to restrict speech: http://motherboard.vice.co…

>For example, one could imagine a world where the social norm was that services embodied some more generalized idea of free speech, and people are reluctant to use services that don't do this because one day it's likely to be used against them.

Ok, I'm having trouble parsing what you wrote. I also looked at your link to see how it relates.

Tell me if I interpreted your hypothetical scenario correctly:

Suppose we have website called OrganicMothers.com that focuses on things like mothers breastfeeding their infants, growing veggies in the back yard and using a blender to pulverize it into homemade baby food. That website has heavy censoring against posts about artificial foods, or alternative viewpoints about synthetic breast milk, or messages with a disrespectful tone.

Another website is AnythingGoesMothering.com allows any writings including chemical additives and all profanity and insults are uncensored.

You're saying that a future societal norm could be where a mother who avoided AnythingGoesMothering.com because it had too many messages saying "any mother who doesn't feed her baby Monsanto's patented baby milk instead of breastmilk is a stupid c-nt!" ... will be denied a job and/or shunned from dinner parties?

Remember that "free speech" includes everything from the cess pool. Basically all text is allowed short of doxxing people's social security numbers.

I just don't see your hypothetical becoming the norm.

Re: Imzy wants to be a kinder, gentler version of Reddit

#149

Post by veddox »

matt4077 wrote: post #142
Noos wrote: post #134

Places like this tend to show the hypocrisy of the average leftist when it comes to free speech, though. When free speech benefits them by weakening social norms (especially religious ones), they champion it, but the moment free speech starts to subvert the new liberal norms they put in to replace it, suddenly we get arguments about how free speech is a limited concept and pleas to rediscover civility and tolerance.…

To a large part the difference is what comedians call "punching up" vs. "punching down" – Making fun of born-again christians is a bit more legitimate because they're 40% of the (US) population and have an insane amount of power compared to the hardcore atheists insulting them. It's quite different from being a muslim in a predominantly christian country being subjected to abuse by the majority. It's also a bit more…

> It's quite different from being a muslim in a predominantly christian country being subjected to abuse by the majority.

Hm, interesting that you choose the example going that way. Not to deny that Muslims face discrimination in the West, but have you had a look at what life is like for Christians in Muslim countries?

Re: Imzy wants to be a kinder, gentler version of Reddit

#150

Post by yummyfajitas »

jasode wrote: post #122
yummyfajitas wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is more to the idea of free speech than simply the first amendment. This essay explains it well: http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/29/the-spirit-of-the-first... The general gist is: imagine a world where women who advocate for suffrage and women's rights are ostracized from society, rejected from conferences and fired from their jobs. Those of us who favor a broader concept of free speech feel this is a bad sta…

>imagine a world where women who advocate for suffrage and women's rights are [...], rejected from conferences Your expanded idea of free speech is noble but it's not possible for society to provide. Free speech allowed by the government is possible. Free speech hosted and paid for by private commercial entities is impossible -- in any long-term sustaining way. The "free speech on commercial entities" would require 2…

I didn't advocate creating any laws. I was simply describing a concept that goes beyond congress.

However, lets roll with your thought experiment. Lets consider a variation of "equal rights" that applies to more than just the government - say it also applied to lending. It would require 2 extra draconian laws:

1) A law to force private entities to associate with people they dislike, even if that association causes to lose money.

2) A law to force some borrowers to pay higher interest rates to subsidize the defaults of others.

Actually these draconian laws exist and are not particularly controversial at all (though they certainly were in the past). I'm curious to know what you think about it.

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