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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

#241

Post by Rebles »

s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #95
teej wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is what Reddit said directly, vs through a media outlet - https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/hi3oht/updat...

The inactive claim is hilarious, let's remove all the mods so you have to close the community so we can claim you are inactive... The funny thing was they removed mods because of the lack of moderation... which was unfounded as they never said what content went unmoderated. It's annoying to be persecuted based on political ideology, but we all know what Reddit is now, the most extreme liberal echo-chamber on the inte…

T_D wasn't banned because it was inactive. spez's post says, "All communities on Reddit must abide by our content policy in good faith. We banned r/The_Donald because it has not done so, despite every opportunity." They weren't banned for political ideology, they were banned for doxxing, fear mongering, and generally being a community full of toxic posts. That's the reason it was banned, and good riddance.

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

#242

Post by anm89 »

submeta wrote: 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…

Throwing Hitler out as a boogie man does not nullify the entire legal system of our country or the intellectual tradition behind it. Yes Hitler would have had free speech too although most of what is viewed as problematic by Hitler would have been considered violent hate speech in our current legal system and would still not be allowed.

As a jew, I support free speech for hypothetical Hitler. Stop using these lazy arguments.

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

#243

Post by smolder »

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…

This resonates with my experience moderating a local facebook group.

I get attacked and threatened by racist instigators and BLM supporters alike because people feel that any moderation against them is solidarity with the other side. I point to the group rules violated and they still assume bias on my part. I AM biased (in favor of BLM) but still get treated like crap when I'm doing my best to moderate fairly, for free, in my spare time, for the benefit of the people treating me like crap.

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

#244

Post by NE2z2T9qi »

psychometry wrote: post #38
jeremiahhs wrote: post #26

The article is incorrect. "racism, misogyny, anti-Semitism, glorification of violence and conspiracy theories that flourished there." That can be seen in all political subreddits - even the favored /r/politics. Those forms of hate were not condoned in T_D. But if washpo wants to rewrite history, they can try. T_D was banned because reddit hates the policies Trump was elected to enact.

There's a difference between hate speech occasionally being found in a subreddit and a subreddit existing principally as a platform for hate speech. the_donald was unambiguously the latter.

Everytime I saw a news article about the_Donald being an irredeemable den of vitriol and hate--and I actually went to check it out to see if the claims were true--all the top posts were just mildly edgy memes, over-the-top bragging about presidential accomplishments, and some conspiratorial claims which seemed repeated half ironically. Could it be that you're just much more easily offended than other people?

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

#245

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

belltaco wrote: post #199
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s worth mentioning the Reddit reason for initial quarantine was “anti police” comments. MediaMatters / ShareBlue wrote an article about how anti police the sub was referencing two downvoted but not deleted comments. The entire sub was always pro law and order. Reddit put very heavy limits on the sub for that. Which is pretty damn funny to me - because right now on every single popular sub there are “all co…

This is quite not correct. What triggered the quarantine was the violent threats against Oregon state police for this: https://www.kgw.com/article/news/politics/oregon-senate-repu... And it wasn't just two comments, and they weren't downvoted. Proof here https://www.mediamatters.org/donald-trump/pro-trump-subreddi...

You know mediamatters wrote that article before Reddit took action right? Reddit used that article as the justification for something they clearly wanted.

It was the Oregon GOP rep that said [If you send the police to get us, send bachelors].

I think it’s a little more complicated than you make it out to be.

It’s a larger discussion of what can mods with a large subreddit be responsible for. Is it reasonable to assume that in a sub that is typically pro police that some users that posted comments get the sub shut down? If that is the standard, can we prove mediamatters didn’t make those posts to point to for effect?

Maybe you are right; but mediamatters is BEYOND extreme bias so let’s not use them as an authority, and there is clearly hypocrisy at Reddit if threats against police “were” a problem.

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

#246

Post by c3534l »

jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #155

This may be the first ban of a sitting U.S. president. Reddit is making history over here and I get to see it. Cool.

They didn't ban Trump, nor did they ban all subreddits about Trump. They banned a single subreddit which repeatedly violates reddit rules and refuses to moderate according the rules.

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

#247

Post by noir_lord »

striking wrote: post #145
pjc50 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was effectively a challenge: how bad can you be without explicitly violating the rules? (I call this "I'm not touching you Fascism", after the popular children's pastime. The goal is to enrage people without ever crossing anything that might be considered a clear line. Most systems evolve a meta-rule somewhere that "pushing the boundaries of the rules is itself against the rules". At the very least "ban evasion"…

As someone who's moderated a community, this is exactly what things feel like. Especially given that our community has an explicit focus on freedom of expression (and what a thorn in our side that's ended up being) We've adopted pretty vague rules as a result, with a lot of room for interpretation, and rather than changing the rules often we've just updated our interpretations and communicated them with the community…

> because the tone of the internet seems to have shifted slightly.

Over the time I've used it (94 to 2020) it's shifted radically, it used to be kooky, niche, fun or just weird (and it is still that on the edges) but by and large rarely mean/cruel, the main sites are just a torrent of bile spouted by morons venting their spleen at the universe.

Comment sections on any news article, youtube videos - pretty much everywhere outside of heavily moderated forums and the like are vile.

It's one of the reasons I visit a few heavily moderated subject specific sub-reddits, this place and IRC and ignore literally everything else (I have comment sections nuked in ublock origin).

I respect anyone who voluntarily wades through that crap honestly.

I do moderate https://old.reddit.com/r/realminimalism/ but no-one has ever gotten the joke.

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

#248

Post by throwaway894345 »

duxup wrote: post #86
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…

Would something decentralized help? I don't think people want that. The_Donald involved a lot of spreading their message / fake news sites / spamming across other subs and etc. Do people want to be on a platform where other folks on the same platform are targeting their community with dishonest and often bigoted content? I'm also not sure how much The_Donald was as a community. The sheer volume of users at its height…

> I don't think people want that. The_Donald involved a lot of spreading their message / fake news sites / spamming across other subs and etc.

> Do people want to be on a platform where other folks on the same platform are targeting their community with dishonest and often bigoted content?

No, but I think people want equal, consistent, and predictable enforcement. Notably, lots of other communities are allowed to exist despite having much more and more overt bigotry including celebrations of political violence and even concerted attempts to slander people and get them fired or harassed. The difference is the groups they target and the transparently BS justifications for targeting them ("well actually, racism doesn't mean 'hating a person or group because of their race'" or something like that).

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

#249

Post by submeta »

NE2z2T9qi wrote: post #162
submeta wrote: 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]

Free speech is not a god given right to spread hate, misinformation, antisemitism, misogyny, etc - And yes: Not confronting people who threaten the very basics of our democracy (respecting human rights and the dignity of our fellow citizens) will help those dark forces rise to the power. The nazis have been elected to power in the Weimar Republic.

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

#250

Post by AgentME »

proverbialbunny wrote: post #160
kylebenzle wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 censor…

I think it's not super useful to generalize things down to being about censorship in the abstract. It can be true without contradiction that many people are against censorship in defense of DRM, and are for censorship targeted at keeping droves of hateful comments out.
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