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Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

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Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if TD were banned in 2016, there's a decent chance the world would look even worse and more polarized today, due to the backlash and chain reactions that would have occurred. Picture "TOP SOCIAL MEDIA COMPANY BANS SUPPORT OF THE PRESIDENT" headlines running for months. Picture Trump bringing it up in hundreds of speeches and tweets, demanding regulation and saying how unfair it is that he and his supporters a…

And? De-platforming works very effectively. Look at 8chan, Gab and Voat. All drowning in server costs trying to host "safe spaces" for certain opinions.

8chan, Gab, and goat are all for very out of the mainstream opinions.

The POTUS has a strong support base, including multiple major media outlets that share information about him. It’s a totally different story. I think he could easily stand up a huge social media network if he needed to, perhaps in collaboration with Fox News.

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#342
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just scape-goating and finding something recent to blame for a situation that has been going on for 150+ years. Besides, it was effectively shut down, and all that did was lead to the creation of thedonald.win, which by all appearances seems to be thriving and growing rapidly, probably much faster than Reddit itself grew when it was founded. To blame the situation on a forum is to misunderstand that the count…

> Besides, it was effectively shut down, and all that did was lead to the creation of thedonald.win You don't end up on thedonald.win by chance, you go there purposefully. For a long time /r/t_d wasn't quarantined at all meaning anyone browsing /r/all would see their posts all day long (since they were pretty good at mass upvoting their own posts for that purpose). I don't think anyone advocates for entirely banning…

>freedom of speech is still important

> just not have it in a place where it might get surfaced and advertised to people that weren't looking for it.

You're going to have to pick one of these two statements. If freedom of speech is important then let the audience determine what makes it to the front page. If freedom of speech isn't important than hide content you don't like and continue building your own bubble.

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#343

>I have urged them to fill my seat with a black candidate I'm not american but does racial quotas have any support? Say every company should have X% of N races on the board? South Africa for example have something like this in their (still majority white) sports teams.

>I'm not american but does racial quotas have any support? Say every company should have X% of N races on the board?

There's huge support for both it and gender quotas, but they're wrapped up in "Diversity & Inclusion" initiatives that focus outcome equity over opportunity equity.

Somewhat ironically you'll also find that the ranks of D&I in corporate and academic America are overwhelmingly filled with white women.

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “only difference” between a group of fascist white supremacists who fantasize about violently exterminating their perceived enemies and a bunch of ordinary people in a community organized around discussing newspaper/news magazine articles who are scared about the growing threat of fascist white supremacists and want them voted out of office and removed from positions of power is that the former have “dropped the…

> group of fascist white supremacists who fantasize about violently exterminating their perceived enemies Ummm, what? so people that support the President are all fascist white supremacists? Is that really where we're at in this country? What about the sizable number of blacks/latinos/and asians that support him, are they white supremacists too? "white supremacist" and "racist", two terms that have been watered down…

No, that reddit community is not representative of all people who nominally support Donald Trump (say, those who voted for him in 2016). However, that reddit community in particular has a substantial number of fascists and white supremacists among its members, and they are welcomed to bring their disturbing violent messages there.

(They are also encouraged by the numerous statements by Trump himself – their “god emperor” – and other allied officials in support of overtly fascist and white supremacist viewpoints.)

What would you consider to be fair definitions of “fascism” or “white supremacism” or “racism”? Does your definition include e.g. neo-Nazis marching chanting “Jews will not replace us”?

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Straw-man. I never said TD was moral--just consistent with their ruleset.

> TD was always an explicitly pro-Trump subreddit. Are you saying "smear campaigns against survivors of a school shooting" is explicitly pro-Trump?

Nobody cares about the survivors of a school shooting, other than having sympathy for them.

The survivors of the school shooting politicized the issue which makes it everyone's problem. They want a political action, they are constantly on the television promoting a certain viewpoint which I believe is asking to give up on my civil rights. They're saying that I need to give up my civil rights because of what happened to them.

Virginia Beach Shooting resulted in sweeping anti-gun legislation passed and the flipping of Virginia legislature, almost none of it was targeted at the survivors of the shooting. There was world's biggest Mass demonstration of armed protesters, and almost nobody brought the survivors of Virginia Beach shooting up.

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#346
post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Besides, it was effectively shut down, and all that did was lead to the creation of thedonald.win You don't end up on thedonald.win by chance, you go there purposefully. For a long time /r/t_d wasn't quarantined at all meaning anyone browsing /r/all would see their posts all day long (since they were pretty good at mass upvoting their own posts for that purpose). I don't think anyone advocates for entirely banning…

> anyone browsing /r/all would see their posts all day long I feel like that's only right and correct; in a sufficiently-large community (i.e. a society), anyone intentionally exposing themselves to "everything" should be prepared to view the worst of the worst (of the worst) of "everything." That's what "everything" means! Honestly, I don't get why /r/all even exists, if it's not there for the people who want to vol…

> anyone intentionally exposing themselves to "everything" should be prepared to view the worst of the worst (of the worst) of "everything." That's what "everything" means!

That would be ok if you saw that in propotion. The issue is when you have a group of people intentionally gaming the upvote system, making /r/all inundated with alt-right content (tbf, /r/t_d weren't the only one doing that), completly skewing what you see.

It's basically the same issue with all social platform, yes everyone should have the right to express their views, but mass amplification via the platform's algorithm shouldn't be a right.

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#348
post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We make value judgements all the time. Reddit puts a NSFW spoiler on violence, porn, etc. Is that considered censorship? Is it really censorship if r/t_d had violated numerous Reddit ToS rules? Rules which all users agreed on when signing up. Make no mistake, it's a no brainer to ban a community that is both outwardly hateful, and regularly abuses the rules of the site they're hosted on.

>>Reddit puts a NSFW spoiler on violence, porn, etc. Is that considered censorship? yes and no. It is lesser because it empowers the user to self select if they want to see NSFW items. That is the key. I put the quarantine on the same level as this, so I have less of an issue with that than if they just banned it outright. >Is it really censorship if r/t_d had violated numerous Reddit ToS rules? yes, let me be clear…

The Reddit ToS has always had restrictions on communities that brigade and abuse other communities. They didn't need to add an exception for r/t_D. Instead, they made an exception to keep the subreddit around, because it was driving lots of traffic to the site.

I implore you to go to ceddit.com/r/the_donald and look at the mod log. See how many slurs and calls to violence you see being manually approved by their mods.

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#349
post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Besides, it was effectively shut down, and all that did was lead to the creation of thedonald.win You don't end up on thedonald.win by chance, you go there purposefully. For a long time /r/t_d wasn't quarantined at all meaning anyone browsing /r/all would see their posts all day long (since they were pretty good at mass upvoting their own posts for that purpose). I don't think anyone advocates for entirely banning…

>freedom of speech is still important > just not have it in a place where it might get surfaced and advertised to people that weren't looking for it. You're going to have to pick one of these two statements. If freedom of speech is important then let the audience determine what makes it to the front page. If freedom of speech isn't important than hide content you don't like and continue building your own bubble.

> You're going to have to pick one of these two statements.

Absolutly not. Repeating myself from a bit further down:

It's basically the same issue with all social platform, yes everyone should have the right to express their views, but mass amplification via the platform's algorithm shouldn't be a right.

Also,

> let the audience determine what makes it to the front page

/r/t_d was gaming the upvote system to have way more posts on /r/all that they would have had 'naturally', making this whole point moot. It wasn't determined by what the audience wanted to see, it was determined by a small brigade of motivated people.

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#350

Relevant context: recently, former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao called out Reddit for their policies after Reddit did a statement on Black Lives Matter: > I am obligated to call you out: You should have shut down the_donald instead of amplifying it and its hate, racism, and violence. So much of what is happening now lies at your feet. You don't get to say BLM when reddit nurtures and monetizes white supremacy and hate all da…

Yeah, TD alone was huge in 2016-2017 and was a huge contributor to the dynamic we have in the world today. Ellen is 100% right here and Alex did absolutely nothing to address it. Good on her for publicly calling it out.

> Yeah, TD alone was huge in 2016-2017 and was a huge contributor to the dynamic we have in the world today.

Surely you mean "the dynamic we have in the world of reddit today", right? Otherwise, that sounds Bill-Gates-Is-Transmitting-Corona-Over-5G-Towers level insane.

It's not the smoldering powder keg in the middle east, the long looming conflict between the US as the sole imperial super power and the up and coming China contesting their role in SE Asia etc, no. It's really TD, a subreddit where Trump fanatics post memes.

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