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Reddit CEO Cracks Down on Abusive Content to Protect Users, Attract Advertisers

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Re: Reddit CEO Cracks Down on Abusive Content to Protect Users, Attract Advertisers

#61

Post by SolaceQuantum »

sandworm101 wrote: post #27
malvosenior wrote: post #8

I would love to see a statement from Reddit/Twitter... explicitly stating that they will remain politically neutral. There’s certainly content that should legally be taken down, there’s probably content that isn’t advertising friendly and could be taken down. It seems like these companies are being very slanted in their evaluation of the latter category. Basically right leaning = bad, left leaning = good. All I want…

>> content that isn’t advertising friendly and could be taken down. That is a dangerous road. Today they might be taking down otherwise legal content with which advertisers do not want to be associated. Tomorrow they are being asked to remove content with which advertisers disagree. Suddenly my 1000-word rant on the evils of Microsoft's latest OS is being taken down. Rather than being a free space for discussion, red…

Isn’t this a slippery slope argument?

Re: Reddit CEO Cracks Down on Abusive Content to Protect Users, Attract Advertisers

#62

Post by Helmet »

josefresco wrote: post #32
artursapek wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of an inside joke on reddit now how left-leaning /r/politics is. It frames itself as a generic political news page but it's so biased it's incredible.

Politics wasn't always like that ... it's now a counter-balance to The_Donald. Hard to remain "neutral" when right next door there's not even an attempt.

Why would r/The_Donald be neutral? It's literally called "The_Donald". It's like expecting r/hillaryclinton to be neutral. r/politics is for all political discussion, but it's just a left-wing echo chamber where ideological conformity and cognitive dissonance are at their peak.

This is coming from a 2x Obama voter and lifelong liberal btw.

Re: Reddit CEO Cracks Down on Abusive Content to Protect Users, Attract Advertisers

#63

Post by aaron-lebo »

koolba wrote: post #58

> Reddit also has a business incentive to clean up its act: It needs to appeal to marketers—and live up to its investor’s expectations. In July, Reddit raised $200 million at a $1.8 billion valuation. > [truncated] > Mr. Huffman didn’t give specific numbers, but said Reddit’s ad revenue had grown fivefold over the past two years, from a small base. I'm sure given the scale of the userbase the property is worth someth…

Yeah, it really doesn't make sense. Reddit was stagnant for a decade, never made money, now they are taking on $200 million and scaling up?

Completely unjustified, people just want something to throw money at.

Re: Reddit CEO Cracks Down on Abusive Content to Protect Users, Attract Advertisers

#64

Post by lordCarbonFiber »

infodroid wrote: post #5

Someone needs to put a stop to this bad meme... On social media, advertising is not an endorsement of the content. This might be the case for traditional media, but social media is different. Advertisers and platforms need to recognize the difference, to accept the lack of control over user-generated content as a feature, and to push back on unfair criticism. But perhaps their real goal is increasing their control ov…

Advertising is an endorsement of content. You have literally paid money to be associated with the people consuming a specific kind of content. Just because there's a middle man doesn't change that. If you want a platform for your incendiary content you're welcome to pay for it yourself; don't expect companies to foot the bill for you.

Re: Reddit CEO Cracks Down on Abusive Content to Protect Users, Attract Advertisers

#65

Post by SolaceQuantum »

adekok wrote: post #13

Similarly, Youtube is demonetizing videos with "bad words". Such as referring to "the naked eye". See here for a deconstruction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlRFoYr-XuY&t=306s This kind of censorship is nice, until it turns into censorship of "things the company dislikes", versus "bad / illegal things." See recent vidcon for an example. Despite rules against harassment, a panelist out-and-out harassed an attendee…

I’m not familiar with vidcon- can you provide a link to the incident?

Re: Reddit CEO Cracks Down on Abusive Content to Protect Users, Attract Advertisers

#66

Post by adekok »

distances wrote: post #46
adekok wrote: post #13

Similarly, Youtube is demonetizing videos with "bad words". Such as referring to "the naked eye". See here for a deconstruction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlRFoYr-XuY&t=306s This kind of censorship is nice, until it turns into censorship of "things the company dislikes", versus "bad / illegal things." See recent vidcon for an example. Despite rules against harassment, a panelist out-and-out harassed an attendee…

> This shows that power and political agendas trump peopl's alleged morality. I'm not familiar with the incident, but I don't think it proves this. If the harassment was real, the organizers could just be incompetent/afraid of interfering/incapable of reading the situation. In which case they're perhaps not suitable for organizing, but doesn't mean it's political.

It's political.

The harassment was excused because the harasser was traditionally a victim, and the harassed person was a white male.

Re: Reddit CEO Cracks Down on Abusive Content to Protect Users, Attract Advertisers

#67

Post by grandalf »

malvosenior wrote: post #8

I would love to see a statement from Reddit/Twitter... explicitly stating that they will remain politically neutral. There’s certainly content that should legally be taken down, there’s probably content that isn’t advertising friendly and could be taken down. It seems like these companies are being very slanted in their evaluation of the latter category. Basically right leaning = bad, left leaning = good. All I want…

Excellent point. Sadly this will likely not happen. Google and Facebook are gradually imposing a highly censored world view.

We can’t effectively reason about social media censorship by analogizing it to meatspace.

Just as virality mechanisms amplify “good” content, they also change the equilibrium state of whose ideas can spread.

Censorship programs work like a squirt of insecticide into a beehive, they kill off some functional parts of the hive organism and eventually lead to the destruction of all of the bees inside.

Similarly, censoring “fake news” or “abusive content” poisons the environment for ideas in a similar way. Ideas are not evaluated objectively. We each react to them emotionally and experience them via the social meaning we associate with them. Prejudices are not rational and are countered by ample evidence, yet there is much prejudice and much religious faith... such beliefs carry a meaning payload enjoyed by their host.

The fear suffered by social media firms (like reddit) is that someone will screenshot a piece of offensive speech alongside an ad paid for by an advertiser, and the advertiser will worry that his/her brand is being associated with that speech.

This is why Colin Kaepernick doesn’t have a job.

Social media firms are thus following in the path of other media firms and are (like The NY Times) putting ad revenue ahead of the first amendment. This isn’t unexpected, these firms are the “tories” of our day.

Re: Reddit CEO Cracks Down on Abusive Content to Protect Users, Attract Advertisers

#68

Post by adekok »

boobsbr wrote: post #40
adekok wrote: post #13

Similarly, Youtube is demonetizing videos with "bad words". Such as referring to "the naked eye". See here for a deconstruction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlRFoYr-XuY&t=306s This kind of censorship is nice, until it turns into censorship of "things the company dislikes", versus "bad / illegal things." See recent vidcon for an example. Despite rules against harassment, a panelist out-and-out harassed an attendee…

> See recent vidcon for an example. Anita Sarkeesian and Sargon of Akkad?

Yes.

Or, Twitter banning people because they didn't do anything, but someone who claimed to like them did things?

And as always... the "good" people engage in harassment, and they don't do anything. The "bad" people don't harass, and get banned.

Re: Reddit CEO Cracks Down on Abusive Content to Protect Users, Attract Advertisers

#69

Post by lordCarbonFiber »

bitL wrote: post #6

So what are reasonable Reddit alternatives that don't act as outlets of banned subreddits? Once you start banning stuff left and right, it's a slippery slope, making large groups of population feel weird/forcing them to learned hopelessness. It would be better instead to train some ML for content classification, then set user preferences about what triggers them, and then warn users that some submission might disturb…

>once you start banning hate speech it's a slippery slope

Or maybe the slope ends with nazis. Just a thought. 4chan will always exist as the bastion for your juvenile ideas of "free speech" (and all of the baggage that comes with it).

Re: Reddit CEO Cracks Down on Abusive Content to Protect Users, Attract Advertisers

#70

Post by zimpenfish »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #61
sandworm101 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> content that isn’t advertising friendly and could be taken down. That is a dangerous road. Today they might be taking down otherwise legal content with which advertisers do not want to be associated. Tomorrow they are being asked to remove content with which advertisers disagree. Suddenly my 1000-word rant on the evils of Microsoft's latest OS is being taken down. Rather than being a free space for discussion, red…

Isn’t this a slippery slope argument?

It's the only argument that reliably gets trotted out whenever someone mentions curbing hate speech.
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