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

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161–170 of 970 posts

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

#161

Whether you agree with the move or not, it's funny how Reddit's stance has changed over time. Under the old ownership, 2012: "At reddit we care deeply about not imposing ours or anyone elses’ opinions on how people use the reddit platform. We are adamant about not limiting the ability to use the reddit platform even when we do not ourselves agree with or condone a specific use. We have very few rules here on reddit;…

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…

It was initially quarantined for "threats of violence against police", but they seem to have changed their narrative since, you know, everyone else started doing it: https://i.redd.it/s2pdnningy451.png

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

#162
post #71

I wonder how someone like Hitler would have been treated. I guess free speech advocates would have helped him to spread his sick ideas and rise to power? Free speech needs to have limits somewhere. If others are insulted, smeared, de-humanized, if hate is spreaded, if under the protection of free speech people rise to power who poison the political climate, then the whole system is in danger of falling apart, with al…

[flagged]

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

#163
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole US was definitely different, Mitt Romney to Donald Trump is quite an extreme transition.

It went into both extremes unfortunately (the other extreme being the rise of militant SJWs).

There's no militant SJWs in the highest political office in the country. There's not even any in Congress.

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

#165
post #28
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…

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.

You realize that it is possible to log out and walk away right?

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

#166
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did and I was left satisfied. I wanted to see their viewpoint on at the time "the hot topic" and confirm my suspicions that I truly don't consider their viewpoint rational or valid. It's like they start from a conclusion and work backwards to excuse it.

> It's like they start from a conclusion and work backwards to excuse it. Almost everything political is like this. What allows you to see the flaw clearly here is your bias is against theirs. It's harder to see this process when you align with the conclusion.

Come on, that subreddit was insane. We should attempt to understand and empathise with people we disagree with, but that doesn’t mean we abandon all intellectual standards. And frankly validating a space like that as a legitimate viewpoint for conservatism is an insult to conservatism and a kind of bigotry of low expectations.

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

#167
This final banning of /r/The_Donald is part of a concerted effort to eliminate any sense of normalcy for being pro-Trump. Even with no content for the past few months (after the mod removal), it stood out as a historical reference point to show thousands of people that supported Trump's 2016 campaign and presumably would continue to support him in 2020.

They had a choice to leave it up and locked, but instead chose to erase it from the Internet and that's no accident.

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

#168
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I wish that we didn't have to go through these things to begin with, and could have more federated and decentralized platforms Decentralization simply leads to the creation of echo-chambers, except with no one to keep the toxicity in check.

I believe that different communities might have different definitions of "toxicity". I don't think global moderation solves this problem.

>>I believe that different communities might have different definitions of "toxicity"

Sure. The problem is that despite the decentralized nature of those communities, they still don't exist in a vacuum. Their various beliefs and behaviors (that the community itself may not consider toxic) inevitably leak out and cause problems for society at large.

The incel community, for example, worships Elliott Rodgers, the guy who went on an insane shooting rampage because sorority girls wouldn't have sex with him. How long until another Rodgers appears? Why should we allow such breeding grounds to exist?

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

#169
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…

> 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.

You could imagine a world where there's multiple apps that access the same decentralized platform, where the censoring happens at the application level. So if your favorite community gets banned in one app, if you want, you could switch to a different app. Not a perfect example, but it would be like how if Google Chrome decided to block somerandomcommunityexample.com you could just switch to Firefox.

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

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet (and Reddit itself) was rather different in 2012.

The whole US was definitely different, Mitt Romney to Donald Trump is quite an extreme transition.

Was it that different? https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-tells-african-american-au...

> Biden tells African-American audience GOP ticket would put them "back in chains"

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