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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

#71

Post by koolba »

zurn wrote: post #43
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…

Nobody can agree on what "politically neutral" means, it's not a useful criterion. Every subreddit listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communiti... could be argued to be political and protected under "political neutrality".

> Nobody can agree on what "politically neutral" means, it's not a useful criterion.

It's pretty easy for a tech platform to be politically neutral. All you need are objective rules for how content "get to the top" and equal opportunity for whatever system is in place to be abused.

That last one is the problem though. Regardless of which side is doing it, there's a sense of unfairness felt by the other side when they see the system get gamed. And it invariably will. Hence the knee jerk reaction to rebalance things, which leads to calls of bias from the other side, and the cycle continues.

> Every subreddit listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communiti.... could be argued to be political and protected under "political neutrality".

Do you seriously consider unconsenting upskirt photos of women[1] political speech? Not just, free speech, but specifically "political speech"?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communiti...

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

#72

Post by zimpenfish »

rightos wrote: post #12
flunhat wrote: post #3

And from what I understand, it's been quite effective, too [1]. It seems that removing abusive communities basically reduces the amount of abusive content overall, because there's one less community where that content is acceptable to share. So not as much of a "spillover effect" as feared, which is good news. [1] http://comp.social.gatech.edu/papers/cscw18-chand-hate.pdf

That study if I recall correctly completely misses the spillover to other websites, considering only reddit itself - but bans on sites like reddit and Twitter have lead to the rise of sites like Gab, 8chan and Voat in recent years. The spillover is very real, just not on the same site.

> The spillover is very real, just not on the same site.

Which is good - concentrate the hate speech into a single place and then take it down.

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

#73

Post by sintaxi »

Fnoord wrote: post #9
godman_8 wrote: post #4

Yah, except they're hosting /r/The_Donald which has been confirmed to violate Reddit rules. Just like Twitter they cherry pick for $$$.

At least you know what you get when you visit /r/The_Donald. Is it better to have a cesspit bubble/sandbox than having none?

I don't see why people care so much. Its just another echo chamber that can be completely ignored. Clearly the benefits of free flow of information outweigh the drawbacks so its best to just accept the drawbacks.

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

#74

Post by bitL »

cannonedhamster wrote: post #53
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…

How exactly does one put a warning on "Posting here may cause you to get death threats, brigaded, doxxed, etc..."? I think Reddit's problems are that their most fervent users are their biggest problems. They actively encourage trolls. Whatever was good about Reddit needs a better site to go to.

You can simply blur the post like Quora does and by clicking on it it would reveal. There is already one mechanism in place by voting threshold, but very popular posts in certain subreddits might not be ad-friendly.

I am looking at social media as a form of reinforcement learning, especially the exploration phase; by censoring it the exploration phase is significantly weakened, leading to worse results in the end. So maybe evolutionary argument would be to allow all kinds of crazy ideas (with some requiring a bit more work to read), and let people themselves to decide which ones would be used in exploitation phase? In the past when a single stupid idea was forced upon everyone by authority (e.g. nazis), people didn't have any means to counter it. With open discussion spaces some people might find excellent counterexamples immediately, clearing the issue for millions right away why a certain idea is a really bad one.

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

#75

Post by sintaxi »

Pxtl wrote: post #34

They'll have to dig themselves out of a pretty deep hole, reputation-wise. While there are specific subject subreddit with fantastic content, most of the regional subs they carry lots of news and politics have a well-earned reputation for racism and xenophobia, and the more discussion-oriented subs add in misogyny into the mix. Only the subs with obsessively strict moderation like the science subs (or /r/Canada polit…

Twitter never should have started down the road of censorship. The only people who agree on what should and should not be censored are the people who don't believe in censorship.

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

#76

Post by zimpenfish »

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…

> a panelist out-and-out harassed an attendee... and the organizers did nothing

You seem to have misplaced the context which I'm sure was unintentional - the panelist, having been harassed and dogpiled for many years by the racist misogynist attendee, who specifically sat on the front row with many of his fellow harassers to make a point, called him a shithead.

That, sir, is why the organisers did nothing - because he is a verifiable shithead and calling him such in front of an audience is not harassment in any sense of the word.

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

#77

Post by zimpenfish »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #65
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?

https://www.polygon.com/features/2017/6/27/15880582/anita-sa...

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

#78

Post by Pigo »

lordCarbonFiber wrote: post #59
Pigo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at /r/politics right now, or any day of the week. Good luck finding one article that isn't about how Trump is literally Hitler. Whether you agree with it or not, I don't see how anyone can say it doesn't have an agenda.

Or maybe he's an example of incompetence; creating national and international gaffs literally every day. Refusing to normalize his behavior isn't a devious agenda when it's that behavior that has paralyzed the government such that there isn't anything else to report on.

Well, that does make sense that it's a daily story to you if you think that way. I just wish the people who do think this could understand how tiresome it is to see every story infused with a Trump angle. Like this Al Franken story for example, there are no posts about the topic that don't focus on the Trump accusations foremost. Why can't it be examined by itself?

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

#80

Post by ebbv »

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…

Your "right leaning" is another person's hate speech. There's no onus on these privately owned web sites to be your definition (or mine) of "politically neutral." If you don't like them start your own platform or use a different one.
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