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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

#171

Post by eduren »

coffeevradar wrote: post #82
argv_empty wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The subs I've heard about banning were echo chambers dedicated to the idea that "this group of people I don't like ought to be [starved|exiled|thrown from helicopters|raped|enslaved]" and such things. If that makes you think the policy is "right leaning = bad, left leaning = good," that says some pretty nasty things about the modern right, doesn't it?

There are plenty of left-wing subreddits with equal measures of vitriol. Somehow they avoid earning the same opprobrium that the right-wing ones do. This apparent double standard creates the appearance of bias.

Feel free to name subreddits

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

#172

Post by dingo_bat »

artursapek wrote: post #150
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, that's the crux: racism and misogyny are terrible enough that if you hate it, you must be correct. For me personally, the echo chamber on both sides is enough to keep me far away from both /r/politics and /r/The_Donald. For example, you cannot say anything positive about Trump on /r/politics. Nothing. There was a screenshot showing that there were 231 negative articles posted and zero positive articles. It's lite…

I got banned from T_D for saying that the reason Obama spent more $ on new regulations in his first 100 days than Trump did was because Obama inherited the financial crisis and Trump inherited an 8 year bull market. It was a simple fact that got me perma-banned. Both of the communities are terrible circle jerks.

You actually expect that from a sub called "the donald". You don't expect that kind of bias from a sub called "politics".

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

#173

Post by SolaceQuantum »

AliAdams wrote: post #92
SolaceQuantum wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t this a slippery slope argument?

'Slippery slope' arguments are not inherently invalid.

Please explain. I was under the impression the reason why slippery slope arguments are unacceptable is because events do not necessarily cause more extreme events to occur.

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

#174

Post by dingo_bat »

PeachPlum wrote: post #161
emodendroket wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which ones do you have in mind? What left-wing sub is there advocating racism or misogyny?

try posting "It's OKAY to be white" in a popular subreddit

How can you post such a racist comment?

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

#175

Post by enord »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #141
argv_empty wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The subs I've heard about banning were echo chambers dedicated to the idea that "this group of people I don't like ought to be [starved|exiled|thrown from helicopters|raped|enslaved]" and such things. If that makes you think the policy is "right leaning = bad, left leaning = good," that says some pretty nasty things about the modern right, doesn't it?

Ah, that's the crux: racism and misogyny are terrible enough that if you hate it, you must be correct. For me personally, the echo chamber on both sides is enough to keep me far away from both /r/politics and /r/The_Donald. For example, you cannot say anything positive about Trump on /r/politics. Nothing. There was a screenshot showing that there were 231 negative articles posted and zero positive articles. It's lite…

>Ah, that's the crux: racism and misogyny are terrible enough that if you hate it, you must be correct.

As is required to maintain what I would call a "democracy" with "individual rights". We have to be vehemently intolerant of intolerance and marginalization (in general), and this is more important than free speech. Free speech is an artefact of-, not a requirement for democracy. Tolerance is required, however. Some people get this backwards, usually the kind of people who can't keep their foot out of their mouth.

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

#176

Post by vidarh »

zeth__ wrote: post #162
vidarh wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the KPD made many stupid mistakes, and frankly given their Stalinist policies at the time were not much better than the NSDAP in most respect, it was the power hungry right wing parties that entered into a coalition government with Hitler and voted for the Enabling Act.

Which has nothing to do with the fact that the street battles between communists and nazis allowed Hitler to take 30% of the vote in two consecutive elections. The left wins elections when it is the victim of violence, it loses when it tries to use violence itself.

You're changing goalposts. If the right had not been willing to suspend democracy in the name of their own hunger for power, 30% or not Hitler would not have gained power.

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

#177

Post by 52-6F-62 »

Cknight70 wrote: post #122
empath75 wrote: post #79

Reddit is swarming with Russian bots and they still have a whole network of white supremecy and various hate subs, operating both out in the open and ‘quarantined’.

All these companies have been pushing this "Russia did it!" narrative with very little evidence or reason backing their claim. My theory why the whole Russian conspiracy is a thing is because its easier to dehumanize Russia as "the bad guys" rather than face the facts of how many people are opposed to you in your own country. Edit: I'm not in denyal that Russia had nothing to do with the election but I think Russia's…

Huh? Pushing? The social media companies continually denied it until pressed. It was the US Intelligence Community that "pushed" it.

And the French Intelligence Community. And the Canadian Intelligence Community. And the Netherlands Intelligence Community. And the British Intelligence Community. And the German Intelligence Community...

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

#178

Post by imglorp »

cryptonector wrote: post #155
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…

Reddit is full of non-advertiser-friendly content. Not just the posts, but the comments. Banning all that content will make Reddit boring to many of its users. As for content that breaks the law, there isn't much of that in the U.S., for obvious reasons. Elsewhere it's another story. As to politics, I don't think you can expect any of these sites to be politically neutral. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit -- all sh…

Right. Unrestricted, adult conversation is what makes it reddit, not kindergarten. It's not always respectful but neither is real discourse in person. If you make it all kittens and candy, you will lose many demographics.

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

#179

Post by traverseda »

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #126
daxorid wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The larger point is that TPTB tend to ban groups that want communists thrown from helicopters, but are absolutely fine with groups that want fascists thrown from helicopters. There's a fundamental imbalance in how the standard is applied, and it's clearly ideological.

I understand your point. I lean conservative myself, but go with me on this. If the people that liberals want thrown from helicopters ( fascists ), are only in that group because they want to throw people from helicopters.... Isn't that the same logic as "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun"? The liberal subs HATE, HATE groups. They aren't calling for random white people, religiou…

Sure. Of course the communists tend to be very "you'll be first up against the wall when the revolution comes".

Both sides of that fight seem to have legitimate cause to claim self-defense.

>They aren't calling for random white people, religious people, or fiscally responsible people to be thrown from helicopters.

No, but they do seem to be a hair away from actively endorsing subjugation. A lot of them seem to have already taken steps to make sure that that demographic can't have a voice in their movement. They also seem to have set the precedent that any criticism of their activism from outside their movement makes you an enemy. I get the feeling that a lot of them would do all those terrible things, if they could. There are fundamental tenets of the movement that give people an excellent excuse to do horrible things.

Instead, we could just, not? I liked the "judge people by the content of their character, not the colour of their skin" thing we had going on. That's an easy rule to enforce, but less so when you start carving out special exceptions that mostly benefit your voter base.

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

#180

Post by infodroid »

geofft wrote: post #29
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…

Wait, what makes it different? There's the old adage that half of your advertising money is wasted, you just have no way of knowing which half. Why would you willingly spend it on putting your ads next to content you don't want to associate with your brand? It seems exceedingly likely that this is the half that isn't productive. (This is also what I don't get about the Twitter fake-account-number business and the You…

How we treat advertising on social media is a matter of convention, a social negotiation. If we agree that it's just targeting demographics and not endorsing the actual content, then that is what it means, and advertising dollars wouldn't care about the content. The effectiveness of social media advertising doesn't need to be sensitive to content.

And maybe it isn't totally different from newspapers and TV news programs. Just like we don't associate advertising on news media with the often violent and disturbing content of the news itself, we don't need to treat social media advertising as endorsing its user-generated content. And in fact, we haven't been doing that until the recent YouTube controversy.

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