Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 970 posts

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

#421

Post by rvz »

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…

The whole cancelling of the opposition is the reason why those who do it, become their own echo-chamber and will continue to find every. single. thought-criminal. and suffocate them in livelihood, privacy and financial healthiness.

Twitter has been the ground digital war of the liberal-left and (some of the far-left) over the conservative right and (some of the actual far-right) and the right-wingers retreated to their own chambers with the former have Twitter under its control. As soon as 'the right' we're told to 'create their own platform' which they have done many times, cancellation was always the goal from those from the left.

Having echo-chambers creates one-sided discussions but unfortunately they are left with no choice given that cancellation is inevitable where-ever they go. If both sides are yelling, screeching and howling at each other they're both not listening to one another which is nothing like a reasonable debate.

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

#422

Post by amyjess »

cryptoz wrote: post #344
WorkingDead wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

IMO the 'heavy censorship' is the only thing keeping hobby communities going well. Without that moderation, you'd be trying to learn about something fun like knitting but you'd see a bunch of hateful content, like racist MAGA stuff instead of knitting for example. Having the moderation get stronger is the only way to save hobby subreddits IMO.

The knitting community is particularly vulnerable to this kind of entryism, as is any other hobby that's seen as traditionally female. Sewing, cooking, etc.

A lot of these groups are getting infiltrated by 'tradwives', a strain of anti-feminist, white nationalist women. They'll join these groups and gladly talk everyone's ear off about how knitting and the like are the only hobbies decent women should be engaged in and how they plan to have as many children as possible to outbreed POC. And that means that any knitting community has to either ban trads on sight or be taken over by them, with no in-between.

Edit: Example: https://twitter.com/banrionnagealai/status/12729121743614074...

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

#423

Post by jwilber »

jakobdabo wrote: post #349
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…

So, why moderate a public forum? Why should platform owners decide what's right and what's wrong? If something is legal then why should we censor it just because it may seem hateful to someone, or somebody feels offended? So what if a post offends somebody? They can deal with it like an adult. Ignore the trolls, and discuss if there is a discussion, offending or not. If people want a safe private place with no intrud…

“ Why should platform owners decide what's right and what's wrong”

Because they made the platform. In some light, it’s the same logic that allows businesses to refuse service, or homeowners to defend their property.

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

#424

Post by tzs »

catsarebetter wrote: post #3

Never checked it out. Don't regret it

Checked it out, and promptly got banned. There was some discussion going on about how the liberal press criticized Trump for wanting to criminalize flag burning but didn't criticize Hillary Clinton for the same thing even though she had actually cosponsored legislation to do that when she was in Congress.

I had never actually heard of that, so looked up the bill to see what it proposed. I posted the summary from congress.gov in case anyone else was curious too:

> Flag Protection Act of 2005 - Amends the federal criminal code to revise provisions regarding desecration of the flag to prohibit: (1) destroying or damaging a U.S. flag with the primary purpose and intent to incite or produce imminent violence or a breach of the peace; (2) intentionally threatening or intimidating any person, or group of persons, by burning a U.S. flag; or (3) stealing or knowingly converting the use of a U.S. flag belonging to the United States, or belonging to another person on U.S. lands, and intentionally destroying or damaging that flag

Banned for posting anti-Trump material.

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

#425

Post by cryptoz »

tenpies wrote: post #392
haunter wrote: post #135

I wonder how they will fight against the other kind of systematic propaganda now but guess nothing will happen. Subs like /r/bestof became absolute shit See the current top post there which is absolutely crazy but hey it fits the agenda.

Reddit is basically a Left-wing propaganda outlet at this point. The amount of clearly targeted sub-Reddits with the aim of radicalising their target group is staggering and would make even the most nefarious of insurgents blush at how open and obvious it is.

Worth noting that from my perspective, reddit is basically a right-wing propaganda outlet and always has been (at least the last 10+ years).

Weird how that goes.

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

#426

Post by nepeckman »

_1qd4 wrote: post #307
samfriedman wrote: post #159

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…

/r/ConsumeProduct was antisemtic? I never saw that in the posts of theirs that made the front page. It was always memes about over-consumption, they might make fun of disposable make-up wipes for example ("And when you're done, just throw it away!" cue gallery yelling in a robotic voice: CONSUME PRODUCT ). Genuinely curious what the link to antisemitism is. Is the thought that consumerism = big business, and big busi…

It doesnt surprise me that the antisemitic stuff didnt make it to the front page, but for the record there was a LOT of it in the top posts of the subreddits. Caricatures in the posts, conspiracies in the comments. They also really focused on vasectomies, which strangely has become a strong signal for alt right presence in a community.

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

#427

Post by donatj »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #105
parliament32 wrote: post #9

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;…

Makes sense to me; the Reddit folks have learned from their experience. Maximalist free speech policies have failed all over the Internet, the only places that adhere to them are Nazi cesspools like Gab.

Define failed?

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

#428

Post by admin1010 »

Do you all think Steve is ok? Like on a personal health level? The constant onslaught of "you're a nazi and racist" and being overwhelmingly hated by your user base must take a toll. How do CEOs in positions like this not burn out or avoid major stress-related health problems?

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

#429

Post by berkes »

jlkuester7 wrote: post #222
duxup wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

IMHO decentralization (via federated protocols) is the most viable option here. Taking Mastodon ( https://joinmastodon.org/ ) as an example, people are able to connect globally with each other, but you also have a moderation framework that allows for true decentralized control over content. You can join an instance with moderation policies that align with your ideals or even host your own instance.

In addition, mastodon, and even the protocol, has a lot in place to mitigate targeted harassment by a community.

Individual Instance blocks, where a user can block an entire instance are in place. Instance blocks on your instance, where an admin blocks another instance for all the users of that instance. And, community driven, blacklists where an admin can copy paste from.

Even more interesting, is that some instances block any instance that in themselves don't block another instance. In practice, this means that if you don't block Gab, there are a lot of instances that don't want to talk to you.

This works. This gives people the freedom to pick and choose or to move somewhere where they have more or less freedom to listen to others.

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

#430

Post by techlaw »

a_t48 wrote: post #235
numpad0 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having seen countless female gore/porn artists on social networking I’m not so sure how important of a problem it is... especially the porn part

Consent is important here.

Logged in just to thank you for your comment (which is 100% correct). So few people understand the role & importance of consent and your comment is appreciated.

Thank you!

Post reply on HN