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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”

#241

Post by throwaway_USD »

torben-friis wrote: post #22

I don't really get reddit's efforts to clean their site. They sometimes come up with measures like this, while routinely ignoring the development of horrible communities that they're aware of (since some users take any possible opportunity to mention them to the admins and are met with silence or half measures). They even came up with the concept of quarantined subreddits. I honestly can't think of a single honest re…

>I don't really get reddit's efforts to clean their site.

You don't get why a online forum might have an interest in ensuring every other post isn't a dick pic?

If you can understand that, maybe you don't, then you DO understand their interest in moderating their own website whether or not you agree with their moderation standards in practice. A dick pic may be obvious to you...but so long as the picture depicts someone >18yo then it is legal and free speech.

>They sometimes come up with measures like this, while routinely ignoring the development of horrible communities that they're aware of...

Again isn't it their right to determine what forums/threads dick pics may in fact be appropriate and which threads forums they aren't and should be moderated/removed?

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

#242

Post by yiyus »

dageshi wrote: post #74
kache_ wrote: post #27

Reddit has been compromised with actors who do not have free speech in their best interest. The other day there was an illuminating ask reddit post about transexuals who decided to transition back and their experiences. That post got promptly removed by moderators; even though there was no hateful content within it at all. They effectively silenced the transexual population due to an ever so slight conflict of ideolo…

I imagine the mods have a fairly finely tuned sense of which threads will turn into a shitstorm and don't give a fuck about pre-emptively killing them. And honestly I WISH nobody used reddit anymore, maybe it could roll back 10 years when it was frankly more fun, but it sure seems like more people than ever are using it.

Many of the oldest users (me included) have just moved from the more general subreddits, where those shitstorms happen, into more and more specialized subreddits. But I miss the old reddit too.

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

#243

Post by mherdeg »

Considering how much of Internet culture is currently being formed on reddit it's amazing how opaque the site is to history. The archival is low-quality and missing a lot.

I sometimes browse by /r/all/gilded, which gives you a weird, weird, WEIRD cross section of the Internet. One time I found a heavily gilded post memorializing a recently deceased contributor to /r/cripplingalcoholism -- which appears to be an important but saddening community for people with a serious medical problem -- then followed a few links on the profile of the deceased and their associated until, a few minutes later, I ended up at /r/opiaterollcall.

Wow oh wow, what a subreddit that was: https://web.archive.org/web/20130904195509/www.reddit.com/r/...

That forum died pretty soon after I found it (and got national press coverage at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/20/us/opioid-reddit.html ) but wow, oh wow, there was a lot going on there which is now essentially lost to readers of history, because existing archives don't go deep into posts and comments.

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

#244

Post by manigandham »

bradlys wrote: post #59
psychometry wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that the users who are upvoting this kind of content will stay on the site if they think their votes matter. Reddit clearly would rather they leave entirely, and this is a good way to encourage racists/misogynists/incels/whoever to find another platform.

It happens for far left content as well. I don’t think it’s limited to hateful content. At least, that’s what I’ve read from the chapotraphouse subreddit. Example being upvoting some far left stuff in r/politics.

Hateful content is never clearly defined and it comes from both political extremes.

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

#245

Post by basch »

cft wrote: post #142
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?

Sure it will be possible to stay open: just double down removing offending content and defend from the lawsuits. Large companies routinely have multiple ongoing lawsuits.

What lawsuits. They are well within their right to remove whatever they want. Maybe not everyone agrees thats how it should be, but thats how it is.

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

#246

Post by jlawson »

cthalupa wrote: post #174
ryankemper wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the extent that a site like Reddit tries to police content and decide what's "hateful" content versus just mildly offensive, etc, the platform becomes less valuable to me. These policy changes have driven me off of Reddit. Not because I was part of any quarantined "communities" but just because I see where things are going. Reddit used to actually believe in the ideal of free speech, full stop. That stopped being…

So, I might be anthropomorphizing a website and drawing too many parallels to my own experience, but having shifted my own stances here over the past 7-8 years, I can't say I blame Reddit. I used to be completely against de-platforming people. And I still think sometimes it goes too far - people should be exposed to diverse ideas, and disagreeing with someone doesn't instantly make you a nazi. I won't mention names h…

>people get radicalized slowly - you start with the softer sound bites, the ones where they have a lot more wiggle room to claim you don't mean this other thing. And as people start to agree with that idea, you move in with one that pushes the boundaries a bit farther. Keep repeating this process, and someone ends up embedded in the extreme forms of hate.

Why does this happen in one direction but not the other? A radical sees something slightly less hardcore. Is influenced. Sees more non-hateful content. Slowly moves away from radicalism and towards the center. Why doesn't that happen equally as the other way around? Should be a balance there, right?

Really, your whole point is essentially stating that these ideas that you hate are more convincing than the ideas you believe in. You don't think you can consistently win the war of ideas via argumentation so, since you obviously are right and your ideas are best, that justifies using power to simply suppress other people's thoughts and words.

All of this rests on your 100% certainty of being correct. Once you admit any level of uncertainty, which you must, your whole approach collapses.

Why do you get to do it to them, but they don't get to do it to you? It's because you think you're 100% right. Of course they think the same about themselves, though, so you're claiming you have some special moral position in the universe that they don't. you stand above them; you have the right to judgment on them but they don't have the right to judgment on you.

Nothing justifies that. The only real differential is that you have the power to silence them and they don't have the power to silence you, and so you're going to use that power and screw equal rights.

>something that you know is harmful and dangerous to human lives

You keep saying these things as though they're absolute facts. They're not facts. That's your opinion. Others' opinion is the opposite - to them all of your beliefs are harmful and dangerous to human lives. And you're walled yourself in so you don't understand the reasoning, and end up thinking it's just inchoate meaningless 'hate' that you're opposed to. You're ignorant of ideas outside your filter bubble, and use the strawman images of opposition you've invented to justify enforcing that filter bubble on others using power.

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

#247

Post by slg »

elpocko wrote: post #160
Fogest wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The post you are referring to was deleted by the user who made the post not the mods.... And that doesn't even relate to this topic as what you're referring to is on a subreddit basis and is determined by a set of volunteer mods not reddit admins.

> The post you are referring to was deleted by the user who made the post not the mods.... Not true. The post body says [removed]. If the user deleted it, it would say [deleted].

I just tested it and any post deleted by the user has [deleted] for both the post body and username. Posts removed by mods will have [removed] for the post body but will still leave the username untouched. A post needs to be both deleted and removed for it to appear like that specific example with [removed] for the body and [deleted] for the username.

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

#248

Post by NOGDP »

majormajor wrote: post #229
NOGDP wrote: post #222

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? 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…

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

I never said that. But it's probably a good idea to have some sort of oversight for a massive platform that censors and manipulates discussion of millions of people. You may think their policies are totally justified and correct (they aren't), but the specific opinions they choose to promote may change to something you are against.

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

Yes, they are also free to shit on the website and point out it's flaws.

> 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.

Trolling is not illegal, it's not even a specific thing. It's a very ambiguous term used to describe 'comment's that make me feel bad'. Trolling and posting illegal shit is completely different, sure ban illegal stuff - you kind of have to, but don't use 'trolling' as an excuse to ban stuff you disagree with.

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

#249

Post by bradlys »

jlawson wrote: post #216
bradlys wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It happens for far left content as well. I don’t think it’s limited to hateful content. At least, that’s what I’ve read from the chapotraphouse subreddit. Example being upvoting some far left stuff in r/politics.

'Far-left content' and 'hateful content' are not mutually exclusive. Quite the opposite, really. It is amazing how people will redefine hating Trump supporters, men, white people, "the 1%", western civilization etc as somehow 'not hateful'. "My hate isn't hate , I just dislike things that are bad." Right.

> 'Far-left content' and 'hateful content' are not mutually exclusive. Quite the opposite, really.

I wouldn't characterize far left content as hateful. Usually it expresses an intolerance for intolerance or hypocritical actions.

> It is amazing how people will redefine hating Trump supporters, men, white people

Is there even a point to you speaking here? You're like an incel on a women's forum. You've transitioned into a complete non-sequitur.

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

#250

Post by lovegoblin »

throwaway_USD wrote: post #241
torben-friis wrote: post #22

I don't really get reddit's efforts to clean their site. They sometimes come up with measures like this, while routinely ignoring the development of horrible communities that they're aware of (since some users take any possible opportunity to mention them to the admins and are met with silence or half measures). They even came up with the concept of quarantined subreddits. I honestly can't think of a single honest re…

>I don't really get reddit's efforts to clean their site. You don't get why a online forum might have an interest in ensuring every other post isn't a dick pic? If you can understand that, maybe you don't, then you DO understand their interest in moderating their own website whether or not you agree with their moderation standards in practice. A dick pic may be obvious to you...but so long as the picture depicts some…

> You don't get why a online forum might have an interest in ensuring every other post isn't a dick pic?

The confusing part is not that they're attempting to clean the site - it's their ineffective, half-assed ways of doing it.

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