Live data from Hacker News

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

techcrunch.com

241–250 of 413 posts

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

#241
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, Reddit isn't responsible for, and couldn't possibly begin be responsible for, hate in the whole world. They banned it on their site, and it cleaned up their corner of the world, and they're happy that the place they have control over has less hate. That's not bullshit. Bullshit is saying "well, we can't possibly get rid of it, so may as well let it stay where ever it shows up."

Bullshit is saying "We stand for free speech" and then later saying "the best way to deal with toxic and hateful viewpoints is to censor and hide them." Belief in free speech as a principle assumes that good and right arguments will win out every day in an open public forum.

> Belief in free speech as a principle assumes that good and right arguments will win out every day in an open public forum

That may have been correct 50 years ago, but technological changes since then call it into question.

It used to take a fair bit of effort on the part of information purveyors to get their information out to a wide audience. Generally you couldn't just come up with a bad or wrong argument and get it rapidly spread far and wide.

On the receiving end, it took a fair bit of time or effort to access information. We might regularly watch a scheduled TV news broadcast, read a daily newspaper, maybe also read a weekly news magazine to get a broader or deeper perspective, and also maybe read more specialized magazines for news and information on more specialized topics we were interested in. If we needed to go beyond that on a particular topic, we'd have to go to libraries or bookstores.

This combination of bottlenecks on both the production and consumption end meant that generally by the time bad and wrong arguments could start to get traction past a fringe audience there would have been time to develop good and right arguments to counter them, and that people would see those good and right arguments.

Nowadays, the barriers to widespread dissemination of the bad and wrong arguments are way lower. On the receiving end, instead of getting our information by setting aside time each day to read/watch a small number of high quality, consistent sources, many people get their news as a side effect of social activity. It is much less likely now that when they get a link to that bad and wrong stuff that they will also get a link to the good and right refutation. And remember, because the dissemination barriers are much lower now, they are getting the bad and wrong stuff on multiple topics, so even if someone does send them a refutation on one they might be too busy looking at the sensational bad and wrong stuff from another topic to go back and read the refutation of yesterday's stuff.

I think that most people recognize that it is important to be well informed. 50 years ago it took some work to be well informed, so we had to put some thought and effort into becoming so. Now, it is easy to think that you are getting well informed as a side effect of your other activities.

We weren't smarter back then, or less gullible, but there simply was much less of a grey area between uninformed and informed. Now there is a big grey area and it is easy to end up in it. The "let the good and right win out in open public forums" only works if the people in that forum who think they are informed actually are. If they are in that grey area, all bets are off.

The situation 50 years ago did have some problems, mainly that sometimes a thing that is actually good and right appears initially to be bad and wrong, and those barriers that helped keep bad and wrong things from spreading would also slow down those "really good and right but looks bad and wrong" things, too, so it took longer sometimes to adopt new good things.

We've removed that friction...but we've removed too much of it. You need some friction to slow down a bit so that people have time to evaluate and react.

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

#242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Society is nothing more than the aggregate form of its constituent parts, i.e. all of us. It’s not separate from us, it is us, and we all have an obligation to act to improve it. Censorship is a tool, just like free speech or liberty or law or justice or rhetoric or tradition, that we have to wield to those ethical ends.

Inasmuch as different parts of society disagree on how to "improve" it, one part does not have the right to censor the other.

Yes, parts of society absolutely have the right to censor other parts of society. Just as we have the right to imprison, or regulate, or chide, or squelch. None of these things are sacred and inviolable lines. All of them are tools, which we have the moral obligation to use, judiciously, to improve the human condition.

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

#243
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes at least for me it is a problem. I want to see those opinion.

Appreciate the discussion even though I'm sure I won't convince you of my viewpoint. I don't know why you would seek input from these types of people but you can, just not on the mainstream platforms. Your desire to inform yourself just does not outweigh the danger of extremist recruitment when giving these views a platform according to current consensus. I see moderating who can participate in a group as part of the…

I understand your viewpoint and I too believe you should fight for your viewpoint in order for it to be the winner.

Likewise, the "extremist" too have their viewpoint, to them you are the danger, and they too will fight for it.

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

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Society is nothing more than the aggregate form of its constituent parts, i.e. all of us. It’s not separate from us, it is us, and we all have an obligation to act to improve it. Censorship is a tool, just like free speech or liberty or law or justice or rhetoric or tradition, that we have to wield to those ethical ends.

Inasmuch as different parts of society disagree on how to "improve" it, one part does not have the right to censor the other.

Racism and white supremacy are not valid viewpoints.

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

#245
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likewise murderer or white supermacis can say the same thing, that they don't care what you think, your morality is wrong and you don't deserve a seat at society's table

Yes, and one of us is right, and another one of us is wrong. That's fine.

So how do you define right or wrong ?

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

#246
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is eroding anything, please don't be melodramatic. Free speech is a protection from the government , not products offered by corporations; end of story. You are free to not use reddit, or create your own reddit.

No, that's the first amendment. It does not equal freedom of speech, and the US constitution is not the be all and end all on how rights like that work. There's plenty of material in the philosophical world about freedom of speech in regards to censorship by private parties and other people.

Freedom of speech is specified as preventing the government from enacting censorship (the act of stopping something before publication) in every constitution I have seen.

It does not mean "I can say what I want and you have to leave me do it".

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

#247

Reddit back in the day: bans /r/fatpeoplehate, /r/coontown, /r/jailbait, and other awful subreddits. Reddit today: effectively bans (quarantines) /r/waterniggas simply because of the subreddit's title. It was quite literally a joke subreddit about being hydrated. Doesn't ban subreddits like /r/hapas. Edit: The problem with reddit is that it's wildly inconsistent about banning subreddits. Insane subreddits can exist f…

/r/hapas seems to be filled with more self-pity than hate. Reading the comments, these are actually mixed-raced kids talking about the racism they face from not only their peers, but also their own family.

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

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough, the implication doesn't go both ways. My point was that all things considered "toxic" are just things that are not being agreed with. Of course, things can also not be agreed with without being considered "toxic".

>Fair enough, the implication doesn't go both ways. My point was that all things considered "toxic" are just things that are not being agreed with Can you give an example because you make no sense or you are stating something obvious, yeah communities do not agree with toxic things because they are bad. The toxic meaning is clear in the context of each community, if you don't agree then don't join, if you want to joi…

Reddit is notably not a community. I can accept a community deciding that it doesn't want certain opinions to be expressed because they don't fit the communal culture, but this doesn't apply to Reddit, which is explicitly a platform for people to start their own communities.

I think there's some room for common sense as to what communities should be given a platform and which shouldn't, for example I don't tihnk /r/coontown should be given a platform in western society which is overwhelmingly anti-racist. But the moment you start banning communities based on criteria that go beyond basic common sense of your society, especially of you do so based on vague and ill-defined rules, you're no longer being a neutral platform. If Reddit wants to be a community as such that's fine, but from my perspective that's explicitly not their branding, and it doesn't seem to be the opinon of Reddit users as agood whole either.

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

#249

A good opportunity to point out that "toxic" means exactly "people I disagree with" and absolutely nothing more.

I find this extremely hard to believe. I disagree with white supremacists, anti-vaxxers, and people who defend sex offenders. I also disagree with think that JSON is more readable than YAML, that C++ is a good language to teach beginners, and that Apache is more user-friendly than nginx. Only one of these groups is "toxic" to me. But just "people I disagree with" is not an accurate representation as to why I find the…

I don't think "causing harm to the general public" is at all a good metric to decide "toxic". I've had to deal with more trouble caused by people who insist on using Apache than I've had caused by white supremacists, and I don't think I've ever met someone who "defends sex offenders" (as a general position).

To begin with, "causing harm" is still essentialyl subjective. An anti-vaxxer wouldn't think they're "causing harm" at all. You're still basing yourself on whether or not you agree with someone or not.

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

#250

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 a…

OK, something is wrong with your anecdote. Bans from a specific subreddit are instituted by the mods of the subreddit. I can easily picture the mods wanting a sub to be run in a certain way, and if you run afoul of them, you are out. Account suspensions from reddit and shadowbans can only be done by reddit admins. Why would they even care about whatever politics are happening in some tiny sub?

> I can easily picture the mods wanting a sub to be run in a certain way, and if you run afoul of them, you are out.

Thus my point. Except the comment is not how they are run but that opinions expressed that don't tow the line are cut from the tree.

Post reply on HN