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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

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Reddit is still very much anti censorship. This is just not true. They are very transparently trying to kick off users/communities that they don't "like". For example basically any subreddit associated with the "alt right", except I believe /r/DebateTheAltRight or whatever it's called. It's very simple: (1) Identify community that you don't like, generally due to association with anti-leftist political views (2) Fi…

The sense of persecution and victim-hood I hear from the right seems rather at odds with how damn successful they seem to be at the moment.

It's like when the silent majority was anything but.

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

#254
post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>About the same time, Reddit placed r/The_Donald in "Restricted mode", removing the ability to create new posts from most of its users. I think this is wrong, IIRC it was the mods who chose to do that, not Reddit admins. The mods wouldn't choose other mods even though the rules made sense, like having a certain karma threshold in t_d etc.

The mods were put in place by the admins so effectively it's Reddit doing it.

No, those mods weren't put in place by Reddit, they were hired a while ago by the top mods, some of who got banned thus making those the top mods. Reddit admins added zero mods to the t_d.

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

#256

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;…

And then the site exploded, and it had to learn how to handle things like actual nazis calling for the deaths of jewish people. I'm not sure I see where the joke is - this was inevitable.

> And then the site exploded, and it had to learn how to handle things like actual nazis calling for the deaths of jewish people.

Oh, so is that why they banned The Donald? Or any of the other number of subreddits they have quarantined and slowly killed?

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

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's wrong with just saying that it's their platform and they have the right to set the rules? 1) They don't want to alienate people who care about free speech. 2) A lot of people liked reddit because it was user-driven, and don't like it when the content they see is selected by admins and mods. They want to keep the illusion of being user-driven as long as they can.

Fully agreed. I think people get up in arms over "but they have the rights to do it", making it look like those opposing decisions of admins believe that admins don't have those rights. Admins own the platform and they totally have the right to set whatever rules they want. No one is debating that. The thing that people point out is that despite admins having those rights, they might be exercising those rights in a w…

There is waaaaay too much content generated on Reddit for the admins to approve or curate. And the success of Reddit is in user-driven communities and content. Admins do not want to be in the business of content curation. Reddit is updating its content policy.

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

#258

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 th…

>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…

So if we assume you are right then those users are going to behave like arseholes in either case, better they behave like arseholes off reddit is likely reddit's point of view - not least for PR/legal issues.

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

#259
post #106

Reddit really had a good run as an interesting site, but it's really angling for a FB style consumer ad experience now. I think the final blow will be when they go after porn like tumblr did, then it will die forever. Too bad the alternatives are pretty extremist. I think Dread is really the best one because people who want to buy drugs on the internet aren't there completely for the politics.

I tried some of the alternatives. I figured if the people I don't like stay in their subgroups, I'm fine. But they don't. They invade every group. I don't want to see extremely racist posts in my "anti-bicyclist" group (for example). They'll take every post and make it about race.

> They'll take every post and make it about race.

It's called trolling. As long as you're feeding the trolls, they keep trolling.

Do other language forums have these race problems? Are English speaking sites being targeted by nefarious actors or botnets with racist remarks for some ulterior purpose? It seems to me that posting racist things on the internet may have been weaponized.

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

#260
post #106

Reddit really had a good run as an interesting site, but it's really angling for a FB style consumer ad experience now. I think the final blow will be when they go after porn like tumblr did, then it will die forever. Too bad the alternatives are pretty extremist. I think Dread is really the best one because people who want to buy drugs on the internet aren't there completely for the politics.

Hobby specific communities were a big attraction point to reddit, but even those have devolved into heavy censorship. There isnt really a good draw to the site anymore.
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