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Reddit started banning accounts that voted for content “against their policies”

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Re: Reddit started banning accounts that voted for content “against their policies”

#221

Post by mtgp1000 »

At this point reddit is arguably a social danger, in that it is made to look like organic content, while in truth everything is heavily censored and opinions are implicitly and explicitly approved in an absolute top down manner.

Opaque vote display and ranking algorithms, keyword based shadowbanning, ideological mods and admin - combined with an organic facade you have a platform to manufacture consensus and push propaganda onto millions of unsuspecting users, young and old alike.

Frankly it's scummy and I hope they fail.

Re: Reddit started banning accounts that voted for content “against their policies”

#222

Post by NOGDP »

majormajor wrote: post #195
cwhiz wrote: post #111

I don't think Reddit should be able to censor lawful content and also claim protections under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. If they want to police lawful content that is fine but then they are no longer an open platform and they should forfeit their Section 230 protections. I dislike the ability for online platforms to have their cake of protection against lawsuits and also eat their cake of policing…

So no site should be allowed to have moderation policies that include things like "no trolling," "no flaming," "no swearing," or anything like else like that for things that don't cross into "illegal" abusive speech? Without becoming a target for filling up with illegal shit to overwhelm the moderators and cause legal trouble for the owners? So HN is gone, too, then.

> So no site should be allowed to have moderation policies that include things like "no trolling," "no flaming," "no swearing," or anything like else like that for things that don't cross into "illegal" abusive speech?

Any site can have any rules they want. But they shouldn't expect to be able manipulate and control discussion and face no backlash from users.

> Without becoming a target for filling up with illegal shit to overwhelm the moderators and cause legal trouble for the owners?

'Trolling', 'flaming' and 'swearing' are not illegal, and honestly, most complaints about 'trolling' I see are just people who disagree with what they're reading.

Re: Reddit started banning accounts that voted for content “against their policies”

#223

Post by majormajor »

alacombe wrote: post #137
root_axis wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without section 230 protection it would be impossible for the site to stay open, so in effect you're saying sites that moderate user content should be shut down. Does that seem like an accurate interpretation of your position?

I'm fine with that. They decide to take a political stance, they shall deal with the legal consequence of their actions.

The core here is that answering the question of "did the site decide to take an unreasonable political stance?" vs "did the user decide to take an unreasonable political stance?" is not as black and white as you would like.

The answer is going to be a moving target. You're gonna have some government bureaucrats having to make rulings on these regulations.

And many of the proponents of this seem to fail to imagine a world where Donald Trump is ever not president. Imagine the power this would give the government against someone who plays fast and loose with 'facts'. "We've decided that the statements in this post were intentionally misleading, therefore they are a political statement, and the owners of the site promoted them in a way that they didn't do to this other post, therefore the owners are making a political statement and this is not a neutral site, which makes it liable for these other comments from other users that we're interpreting as violent threats."

Re: Reddit started banning accounts that voted for content “against their policies”

#224

Post by braythwayt »

jlawson wrote: post #207
braythwayt wrote: post #178

Every time we have a conversation about why Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit shouldn't be allowed to"censor" content, I ask what would become of Hacker News if it was not permitted to moderate spam or threads that do not follow the HN guidelines. I think it would quickly devolve into 4Chan. Almost all of the current community would decamp, and the trolls that infest other sites would take over.

For structural reasons this comparison makes no sense. HN has one homepage; one sub-community. Reddit has an infinite number of subreddits. Similar for facebook. Even with no moderation, in no case would anyone be exposed to content that wasn't posted and allowed in a community that they deliberately subscribed to. Reddit polices what kinds of communities are allowed. HN is one kind of community.

It makes no sense to you, but for years, users on certain subreddits were exposed to users and their views from other subreddits thanks to brigading.

Likewise, Reddit and Facebook both have to deal with being judged by all the forums they "host." You may not think it makes sense to criticize Reddit as a whole for hosting white supremacist forums and violent misogyny forums, but the rest of society seems to think that one bad apple forum spoils the entire Reddit and Facebook barrel.

If you're looking for a comparison, I don't have to read any thread I don't want to on HN, just as I don't have to join any subreddit I don't want to on Reddit.

But I know they're there, and that affects my perception of what HN or Reddit or Facebook is.

If it was just about hiding content, we could argue that HN shouldn't censor anything, but if we let people tag threads and comments with labels like "white supremacy" or "SJW raving," then everyone can filter what they don't want to see, so what's the problem?

Re: Reddit started banning accounts that voted for content “against their policies”

#225

Post by klodolph »

the-dude wrote: post #210
Spivak wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And also how to deal with communities that should absolutely not be spilling over into the rest of Reddit. Reddit, I think rightfully, quarantines a lot of ED related subreddits.

What does ED stand for?

Eating disorder, I’m sure. There are pro-eating disorder forums around on the internet just like there are pro-suicide forums.

Re: Reddit started banning accounts that voted for content “against their policies”

#226

Post by mtgp1000 »

motohagiography wrote: post #64

There seems to be a divide between people who think discourse is a progressive art of the exchange of ideas, and those who use language as a pretext for political struggle where the role of ideas is to act as provocations that yield a persons "true," alignment and identity. The latter view means engaging ideas compromises your ethical purity, where the former one means people can express abhorrent ideas without physi…

The dichotomy is seems to be reflected in the growing divide between rational, scientific inquiry, and modern progressive liberal arts which are rooted in critical theory.

Re: Reddit started banning accounts that voted for content “against their policies”

#227

Post by SauciestGNU »

freeone3000 wrote: post #57
godzillabrennus wrote: post #15

There is an alternative to the group think/hive mind called https://gab.com/ but it’s also a cesspool or horrible people sharing horrible ideas. Not sure what makes sense.

This is what happens. Banned content by reddit policies is hate speech, far-right politics, and targeted hate. People who leave reddit for somewhere else do so because... they want to do those things, and can't. It's no wonder that any forum they then choose would become dominated by those ideas, that's the entire point.

Lots of left wing politics receive these inbox scolds too, it seems to affect hate speech, harassment, and also political ideologies outside of the advertiser comfort zone.

Re: Reddit started banning accounts that voted for content “against their policies”

#228

Post by lazyasciiart »

the-dude wrote: post #210
Spivak wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And also how to deal with communities that should absolutely not be spilling over into the rest of Reddit. Reddit, I think rightfully, quarantines a lot of ED related subreddits.

What does ED stand for?

eating disorder

Re: Reddit started banning accounts that voted for content “against their policies”

#229

Post by majormajor »

NOGDP wrote: post #222
majormajor wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So no site should be allowed to have moderation policies that include things like "no trolling," "no flaming," "no swearing," or anything like else like that for things that don't cross into "illegal" abusive speech? Without becoming a target for filling up with illegal shit to overwhelm the moderators and cause legal trouble for the owners? So HN is gone, too, then.

> So no site should be allowed to have moderation policies that include things like "no trolling," "no flaming," "no swearing," or anything like else like that for things that don't cross into "illegal" abusive speech? Any site can have any rules they want. But they shouldn't expect to be able manipulate and control discussion and face no backlash from users. > Without becoming a target for filling up with illegal sh…

> But they shouldn't expect to be able manipulate and control discussion and face no backlash from users.

You're saying they should face backlash from government regulators not from users.

If there's a big user backlash, those users are already free to move to whatever site they want, or make their own.

---

Re: your comment about trolling, etc, not being illegal: yes, exactly. So if a site wanted to enforce some sort of "family friendly" policy, you could simply bomb them with truly illegal shit instead and get them in trouble with the regulators for not being able to keep up as they would be liable for that, since they aren't a "anything legal goes" platform.

Re: Reddit started banning accounts that voted for content “against their policies”

#230

Post by guscost »

majormajor wrote: post #195
cwhiz wrote: post #111

I don't think Reddit should be able to censor lawful content and also claim protections under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. If they want to police lawful content that is fine but then they are no longer an open platform and they should forfeit their Section 230 protections. I dislike the ability for online platforms to have their cake of protection against lawsuits and also eat their cake of policing…

So no site should be allowed to have moderation policies that include things like "no trolling," "no flaming," "no swearing," or anything like else like that for things that don't cross into "illegal" abusive speech? Without becoming a target for filling up with illegal shit to overwhelm the moderators and cause legal trouble for the owners? So HN is gone, too, then.

There should be a users/penetration threshold above which enforcing a cultural code of conduct waives immunity. GDPR uses a similar threshold, and unless you're seriously arguing that "trolling", "flaming", and "swearing" are being moderated successfully on e.g. Twitter, it seems practical.
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