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Reddit shuts down subreddits including r/The_Donald and r/ChapoTrapHouse

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Re: Reddit shuts down subreddits including r/The_Donald and r/ChapoTrapHouse

#151

Post by BoorishBears »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #134
BoorishBears wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Donald would have been deleted under the old leadership too... They got in hot water not for supporting Trump (there are plenty of pro-Trump subreddits) but actively breaking the most basic rules of Reddit, maybe you should actually look at their history. Spamming the same images to the subreddit, interfering with other subreddits, trying to out whistleblowers in federal cases, gaming the content discovery system…

Your history is quite wrong. They were initially quarantined for “anti police” comments. Which looking through the current state of Reddit is a bit hypocritical. Edit: https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Scree...

Are going to pretend everything in that history section is wrong and they were only quarantined for anti-police comments?

There are literally dozens of crises that the subreddit spawned, literally any of which would have been explained it. The fact we can actually go back on forth on which one of the many many many straws broke the camels back says it all.

You also seem to want to go so far as to imply the only reason other subreddit get away with anti-police sentiment is some kind of hypocritical favortism?

Re: Reddit shuts down subreddits including r/The_Donald and r/ChapoTrapHouse

#152

Post by Joeri »

ve55 wrote: post #7

Worth taking note that in today's climate, you really cannot win when you are in a position to moderate important things that a lot of people use. There is constantly tremendous pressure on you to perform opposing actions, and even making no decision at all will cause you significant mental stress and harassment, regardles of what the issue is. You have to pick who you want to cave to, and to what extent, and no matt…

If you make enemies regardless of what position you take, you are free to take your own position without guilt or additional consequence. Moderators should take positions based on what they personally believe moderation should be (or those deciding the rules for moderators should do so). Just because their position may align with the interests of a particular group does not mean they are caving to that group.

Re: Reddit shuts down subreddits including r/The_Donald and r/ChapoTrapHouse

#153

Post by dboreham »

rmrfstar wrote: post #146
nullc wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just hate you, but stalk, threaten and harass you. There are some people where even just saying-- as a moderator-- "Hey, can you chill out and at lease pretend to treat other posters with some respect" will trigger a full on war against you. There aren't many people like this, but it only takes a few because even a single obsessed person can spew a lot of hate.

It's really too bad that there are no scalable "proof of intellectual work" protocols for human interactions. I guess 3301 got things right with the Liber Primus.

Isn't this pretty much what "elites" are for?

Re: Reddit shuts down subreddits including r/The_Donald and r/ChapoTrapHouse

#154

Post by criddell »

josefresco wrote: post #22
catsarebetter wrote: post #3

Never checked it out. Don't regret it

I visited, shared my viewpoint and was promptly banned. Good for you to stay away (for your mental health) but seeing first-hand the sort of hate and bigotry posted daily was both shocking and informative.

I visited a couple of times but couldn't share my opinion an anything because it would have been in violation of the sub's rules. Basically any anti-Trump comments were a violation of the rules.

There's a bit of irony in an anti-free speech community eventually being shut down by the hosting platform.

Re: Reddit shuts down subreddits including r/The_Donald and r/ChapoTrapHouse

#156

Post by wefarrell »

ve55 wrote: post #7

Worth taking note that in today's climate, you really cannot win when you are in a position to moderate important things that a lot of people use. There is constantly tremendous pressure on you to perform opposing actions, and even making no decision at all will cause you significant mental stress and harassment, regardles of what the issue is. You have to pick who you want to cave to, and to what extent, and no matt…

Social media companies should not be in this position where they are the arbiter of what is offensive/explicit/hate speech vs acceptable free speech. Despite what they state, they will ALWAYS make the decision that generates more profits or power.

There really needs to be effective legislation given the importance of free speech for democracy. Unfortunately government agencies are so politically charged that I trust them with enforcement even less than social media companies.

Re: Reddit shuts down subreddits including r/The_Donald and r/ChapoTrapHouse

#157

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

abnry wrote: post #31

If the rationale for banning is policy violations (doxxing, racism, vulgarity, calls for violence, etc), as long as the standards are consistently enforced I'm okay with it. Although my caveat is that racism is defined differently for different people. I E., racism has to be directed towards a marginalized group vs derogatory statements based on racial characteristics. This is my main problem with Twitter. The standa…

> racism has to be directed towards a marginalized group vs derogatory statements based on racial characteristics.

Here I am old school just thinking the color of a mans skin should have no more significance than the color of his eyes...

I don’t believe in the oppression olympics and that hate is ok because group A has it worse than B.

Edit: HN 2020, ideals of Haile Selassie are rejected in the name of “tolerance” I guess? What a wild ride!

Re: Reddit shuts down subreddits including r/The_Donald and r/ChapoTrapHouse

#158

Post by [deleted] »

txcwpalpha wrote: post #23

About time. However, this move was mostly symbolic. r/the_donald has been inactive for months without a single new post on it. AFAIK the community had already moved on to another site off reddit. Much more significant IMO is that the ban also includes r/ChapoTrapHouse, which is a "left"-leaning subreddit accused of much of the same stuff r/the_donald was.

[deleted]

Re: Reddit shuts down subreddits including r/The_Donald and r/ChapoTrapHouse

#159

Post by samfriedman »

The title should be updated, as T_D was just one of a large number of subs banned today; even then, it has been largely irrelevant since the admins' earlier decision to quarantine it and impose other restrictions.

Other larger banned subs include /r/GenderCritical (anti-Trans) and /r/ConsumeProduct which was ostensibly for criticism of consumerism and product promotion, but hid a large strain of antisemitism below the surface in a similar though less-direct fashion to previously banned /r/clownworld (barely-veiled antisemitic and racist cartoons/commentary). Also banned is /r/chapotraphouse, notably the biggest (only?) left-leaning sub on the list. Its users were known to be relatively cantankerous and tended to kick off a lot of brigading on Twitter and such; though some will say its banning was a "both sides" maneuver from the management.

In my own opinion this was a long time coming, and Reddit has long since shown that the original hands-off model is woefully inadequate in the face of communities that are willing to expend the effort to argue continuously in bad faith, organize to influence and control opinion in other communities, and attack the platform itself in their campaigns for hateful speech. Just ask /r/BlackLadies if you think these users "stay in their containment areas". Hopefully Reddit is turning the page to better empower its communities to protect their users and keep hate off the platform.

Re: Reddit shuts down subreddits including r/The_Donald and r/ChapoTrapHouse

#160

Post by proverbialbunny »

kylebenzle wrote: post #41
ve55 wrote: post #7

Worth taking note that in today's climate, you really cannot win when you are in a position to moderate important things that a lot of people use. There is constantly tremendous pressure on you to perform opposing actions, and even making no decision at all will cause you significant mental stress and harassment, regardles of what the issue is. You have to pick who you want to cave to, and to what extent, and no matt…

Users won't allow for (use) decentralized platforms until there is a good way to censor them. Once that happens, what would be the point of switching. Facebook and Reddit are successful BECAUSE they are censorship machines. Facebook spends far more man hours on "curating" content compared to engineering. Same with Reddit. Add up all the "moderation" time spent removing negative or controversial posts and I bet much m…

Actually, that's not quite true. Reddit's first wave of popularity came from a lack of censorship. There was a decryption code posted on a news story on Digg that allowed one to decrypt a bluray. Digg got a cease and desist, took it down, and people started protesting on Digg posting the code everywhere. During this time was the first wave where people started jumping from Digg to Reddit because of the lack of censorship.

The lack of censorship was so bad Reddit used to have a lot of child porn on it and Reddit fought the US gov on it stating it shouldn't have to censor content.

I suspect The_Donald has been shut down primarily due to a lack of moderators. This causes drama to get escalated outside of the sub and the Reddit admins do not want to deal with it. Reddit is still very much anti censorship.

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