Study finds Reddit’s ban of its most toxic subreddits worked (2017) • Hacker News Board

Re: Study finds Reddit’s ban of its most toxic subreddits worked (2017)

#141

Post by rmah » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 2:30 PM UTC

pmarreck wrote: post #110

jonwachob91 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of online hate speech (of any variety) is driven by groupthink. If you make it harder to find the hate groups, you de facto reduce the groupthink.

So you would prefer edgy platforms to move from open cleartext forums where they can be argued against and monitored, to private encrypted forums only populated by the choir, as it were? This will not end well.

I think that is a good end. The definition of ending well. Such forums are, by definition, smaller and have less reach. Moreover, it is clear that members of such forums are supporters of the nastiness the forum espouses.

Re: Study finds Reddit’s ban of its most toxic subreddits worked (2017)

#142

Post by reader5000 » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 2:33 PM UTC

sagichmal wrote: post #50

lsd5you wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels to me like hubris, a kind of 'end of history' prediction that we have finally progressed to at least the beginnings of a final moral order. Personally I don't believe this to be the case, and the ways it can go wrong will leave us wishing that freedom of speech protection had not been eroded.

Free speech has only ever been a means. Some elements of enlightened society got caught in the local optima for awhile (Locke, Hume, etc.) but that only worked out as long as the bad-faith actors could be marginalized or overpowered in a given context. Now that we have the ubiquity of the internet, coupled with the N-chans and Voat and whatever, the trolls have successfully weaponized the unthinking elevation of a me…

Whoever is in power determines what is "ethical society" or what makes society "better". Censorship is a form of physically violent oppression and is never justifiable.

Re: Study finds Reddit’s ban of its most toxic subreddits worked (2017)

#143

Post by crowbahr » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 2:34 PM UTC

pmarreck wrote: post #110

jonwachob91 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of online hate speech (of any variety) is driven by groupthink. If you make it harder to find the hate groups, you de facto reduce the groupthink.

So you would prefer edgy platforms to move from open cleartext forums where they can be argued against and monitored, to private encrypted forums only populated by the choir, as it were? This will not end well.

The way to kill terrorist groups is to win the hearts and minds of the general populace and then crush the platforms they use for recruitment.

Like terrorism, so hate.

Re: Study finds Reddit’s ban of its most toxic subreddits worked (2017)

#144

Post by wswope » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 2:35 PM UTC

Hermel wrote: post #26

For a long time, I underestimated the power of the mods. Then, I saw how a few of them could turn the sentiment of a technical forum about a seemingly technical question upside down, simply by banning the right users and removing the right posts. Censorship works, regardless of whether it is used for good or for bad.

I agree, for me the big surprise was the impact of removing the "vice" subs, e.g. darknet market/some piracy-related ones. You'd think with the internet being the internet, those communities would just move elsewhere, and no doubt some members did, but for the most part the communities just died and the world moved on.

Re: Study finds Reddit’s ban of its most toxic subreddits worked (2017)

#145

Post by intertextuality » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 2:37 PM UTC

0815test wrote: post #108

wpietri wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's contextual. Many slurs have been reclaimed by the communities that they have been applied to. E.g., as a mild example, terms like "nerd" and "geek" were pejoratives that were adopted and reworked. E.g., Geek Pride: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geek_Pride_Day As with most of these slurs, positive in-group use is ok, but negative out-group use is still generally seen as abusive. I might talk about my geeky ways o…

> The N word is of course much more extreme given America's ugly, unresolved history around race, but it's the same rough deal. I think this is quite dubious. "Nerd" and "geek" or even "freak" were never pejoratives in the way that the other word was. You could sympathetically say of someone, even as an outsider "He's a bit of a nerd/geek". But it would make no sense for one who was sympathetic to say something like…

Nerd, geek, and freak are nowhere near as utterly vile as the n word. They are in completely different leagues.

The first step to understanding the reclamation is understanding just how offensive the n word was and is today. And the culture that surrounded it.

For non-Americans this topic is a difficult issue to get into because it involves unpacking and understanding so much history and culture.

Re: Study finds Reddit’s ban of its most toxic subreddits worked (2017)

#146

Post by dcolkitt » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 2:38 PM UTC

sagichmal wrote: post #36

DeusExMachina wrote: post #29

It "worked" only if the definition is "it removed it from Reddit". As the article mentions, these people did not just disappear or change their mind. They just moved to more obscure places, where they can continue and be evem more motivated, because now they have been censored. And you might still consider this to be a satisfiable definition for "it worked". Out of sight, out of mind. Except that, these people are no…

> It "worked" only if the definition is "it removed it from Reddit". As the article mentions, these people did not just disappear or change their mind. They just moved to more obscure places, where they can continue and be evem more motivated, because now they have been censored. What about all of the new people who would have more easily stumbled into those cesspools, but now have to take quite a bit more effort, an…

I feel like you're disregarding the concept of the "marketplace of ideas". Pretty much the entire corpus of post-enlightenment thought rests on the (IMO well-founded) belief that good ideas will naturally win over bad ideas when presented on equal footing.

Someone from 1500 would be very much concerned about censoring "heresies", because they'd believe that people are easily swayed and manipulated by evil. I think we know that dumb ideas, are just that, dumb. There's a reason why these types of extreme ideologies, are just that, fringe beliefs. Because the vast majority of people recognize that them for the idiocy that they are.

If we can tradeoff exposing normal people to extreme ideas, and extremists to mainstream thought, that's a great tradeoff. Many, many more of the latter will be convinced than the former.

Re: Study finds Reddit’s ban of its most toxic subreddits worked (2017)

#147

Post by klez » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 2:39 PM UTC

untog wrote: post #119

DeusExMachina wrote: post #29

It "worked" only if the definition is "it removed it from Reddit". As the article mentions, these people did not just disappear or change their mind. They just moved to more obscure places, where they can continue and be evem more motivated, because now they have been censored. And you might still consider this to be a satisfiable definition for "it worked". Out of sight, out of mind. Except that, these people are no…

The issue isn't where radicalised people go. It's how people get radicalised in the first place. Both Reddit and YouTube are general purpose sites. Very, very few people go on there to discuss the e.g. racist beliefs they already have. But the algorithms on these sites ends up exposing people to extreme views - there are many, many examples out there of people watching an innocuous video on YouTube only to immediatel…

> Germany has outlawed Nazis since the end of WW2 and guess what... they haven't taken over again

Counter to that, Italy has a provision in its Constitution that forbids the reconstitution of the fascist party and now we have at least two that declare themselves as such (and have a few seats in the parliament), and one that, despite not being explicitly fascist, has more or less similar ideals and methods, has the relative majority of consensus in the country and is governing right now.

EDIT: did I write something false, inflammatory or off topic?

Re: Study finds Reddit’s ban of its most toxic subreddits worked (2017)

#148

Post by sureaboutthis » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 2:40 PM UTC

About a year ago, we had a discussion about reddit at work and tried this experiment. Three of us went to a city subreddit, /r/mycity, and looked for controversial posts about things like local politics, things involving police, and so on. One of us would make posts agreeing with others in the thread. Another would ask questions, feigning lack of knowledge but generally disagreeing, while a third intentionally took an opposing view. In all cases, we were careful not to attack anyone or use curse words or other disparaging remarks.

Interestingly, the first city we tried didn't upvote or downvote very often but the posts that disagreed with the view of the thread quickly, within a day or two, found their posts banned or shadow banned--that is, their posts appeared to us as going through but, in reality, did not appear to anyone else.

Some of the city subs, where the person slightly disagreed with the thread but mostly said they didn't understand the points, always found their posts either listed at the bottom, were downvoted, or got themselves banned but it took longer--perhaps a week or two.

No person agreeing with the thread was downvoted or ever banned which is to be expected. However, the whole point of our doing this was to prove our expectation that reddit is a biased culture that only lets those in who will agree with the crowd and won't let opposing views in. At least in the /r/city threads we chose but we noticed the same behavior in many technical subs, too.

I wish we kept the data but none of us visit or use reddit in any way, for these reasons and a few others, and we only scribbled the notes on paper somewhere.

Re: Study finds Reddit’s ban of its most toxic subreddits worked (2017)

#149

Post by eropple » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 2:40 PM UTC

skilled wrote: post #35

I would be careful with getting the pitchforks. In reality, very few people live through such anger and hate on a daily basis. Still, I do agree with banning most of those subreddits in defense of people who might get distressed and deeply offended.

One of my side hobbies is tracking and studying online reactionaries--in an effort to understand how their swamps bubble over and they impact society at large I've got eyes and ears on something like 60K accounts and probably 20K real identities behind them across Twitter, Discords, Riot groups, etcetera. (I should say "fascists", though; in my estimation, there aren't many reactionaries around, these days, who wouldn't fit the term.)

I can assure you plenty of people "live through such anger and hate on a daily basis". The Diet Coke version of this is Fox News, where on their hard-news shows they literally hard-cut to commercial when, after a shooting at a synagogue guests so much as mention that Trump et al. encourage racism and anti-semitism. It is systemic and systematic and the way this stuff poisons the brains of the people who are soaked in it is very, very real. We underestimate it at our peril--because the full-on, undiluted thing is a hell of a lot more powerful a drug.

Re: Study finds Reddit’s ban of its most toxic subreddits worked (2017)

#150

Post by 0815test » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 2:42 PM UTC

intertextuality wrote: post #145

0815test wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The N word is of course much more extreme given America's ugly, unresolved history around race, but it's the same rough deal. I think this is quite dubious. "Nerd" and "geek" or even "freak" were never pejoratives in the way that the other word was. You could sympathetically say of someone, even as an outsider "He's a bit of a nerd/geek". But it would make no sense for one who was sympathetic to say something like…

Nerd, geek, and freak are nowhere near as utterly vile as the n word. They are in completely different leagues. The first step to understanding the reclamation is understanding just how offensive the n word was and is today. And the culture that surrounded it. For non-Americans this topic is a difficult issue to get into because it involves unpacking and understanding so much history and culture.

> Nerd, geek, and freak are nowhere near as utterly vile as the n word. They are in completely different leagues.

Yes, which supports what I said, contra what GP said. You can't just take such a vile word with such vile connotations attached and "rework" it harmlessly like you could with "geek"-- that's just not how human psychology works, and an IAT or such would easily bear this out. You'd have to wait for the whole semantic field of the original word to become basically forgotten, then you could freely reclaim it.

(There is such a thing as dysphemism shift, but it tends to happen randomly or to be driven by language-internal forces. "Yankee" used to be a (mildly) derogatory term, but it became popular and neutral because there was no sympathetic term for "a U.S. person" in the lexicon - so "Yankee" moved into that space. But even this is a rare phenomenon; you can't just "make this happen".)