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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

#431

Post by dfxm12 »

ant6n wrote: post #345
mantas wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many left-leaning subreddits were banned? There're several toxic commie subs with a lot of hatred thrown around, but nobody seems to care. r/politics was default for ages and it wasn't exactly a welcoming place.

I find it wierd what some Americans consider to be communist. A communist is not somebody who advocates for * equal rights for all people independent of ethnic origin, skin color, gender or religion * public transit * universal access to health care * affordable higher education * affordable housing * or even wealth redistribution via taxes, for example via welfare or a guaranteed minimum income A Communist is somebo…

I'm not quite sure there are many actual Communists in the US.

Even if there are any (and there probably is, given the number of people in America), more importantly, they certainly hold zero political power and have no sway in any but tiny, niche political discussion.

These days, "Communist" is more likely to used by a conservative commentator in bad faith when trying to lazily vilify their opponent (communism has a bad rep in mainstream American politics since the cold war) than to actually refer to a bona fide communist. See also: "socialist".

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

#432

Post by robotron »

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.

I haven't seen this mentioned in any stories but r/antifa is also banned. It could have come about as something else but I took a peak in it Thursday and it was there.

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

#433

Post by nullc »

abellerose wrote: post #315
u320 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because something is hated by most of the left doesn't make it "not left".

As a trans person myself. All that subreddit did was target hate towards trans people. Anyone care to elaborate on what else they did with actual proof?

Asking for actual proof now is a bit of a tall bar since the subreddit is no longer accessible!

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

#434

Post by AnthonyMouse »

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…

> 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?

What's wrong with a decentralized "platform" that works like the web?

Anybody, right now, can submit some bigoted trolling to HN. It'll get flagged and killed in ten seconds. And then people don't much bother because there's no advantage in immediate failure.

You can have a "platform" that shares formats and protocols and supports shared links but has independently-moderated subsections, and then the contents of each one is reflected in how it's moderated.

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

#435

Post by mzs »

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;…

the announcement itself: https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/hi3oht/updat...

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

#436

Post by jrumbut »

lucasmullens wrote: post #169
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…

> 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 perf…

I like it! Every community could have their own "domain" and you could choose, at any time, which ones to visit and which to ignore and there would be a search engine to help find new communities for you.

(All jokes aside, I really love your idea of having different apps act like lenses or filters which give you different views of the same underlying ecosystem. That's the kind of conceptual novelty that's in short supply right now.)

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

#437

Post by amadeuspagel »

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 fundamental problem here is that people discover things that make them angry. Platforms need to figure out how to prevent that, how to let open-minded people discover others who think differently, while keeping crybullies in a comfortable bubble.

For reddit, part of the problem is that everyone who isn't logged in sees the same frontpage, which means they see posts from these controversial subreddits and get angry. They should make it possible to subscribe to or block subreddits without making an account.

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

#438

Post by freen »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #356
williamgrant wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is a common sentiment there that the only good Democrat is a dead one. A similar sentiment is commonly expressed by far left individuals and groups on Twitter, Facebook and other mediums. "the only good Tory is a dead Tory" has been the popular refrain for decades. It's depressing these sentiments are carelessly amplified and approved by so many. Edit: Apparently this has caused a stir. I encourage others to not…

They're not. Not only is "The only good Tory is a dead Tory" not a popular refrain at all [1], but a quick search for "The only good Republican is a dead Republican" returns a lot of hits for the "[...] dead Democrat" quote and almost none for the search phrase. These attempts at false equivalence reliably appear in these situations, and there's reliably nothing to back them up. The difference is the right is trying…

The overwhelming majority of terrorism in the United States is committed by right wing extremists.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/homegrown-...

The anti-gun, peace-loving left may not be the most polite online, but they emphatically are not as violent. Not by a long shot.

Anyone who tells you otherwise is either uninformed or lying through their teeth to push an agenda.

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

#439

Post by alexandercrohde »

usefulcat wrote: post #402
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…

> I'm also not sure how much The_Donald was as a community. The sheer volume of users at its height seemed to involve a huge amount of brand new accounts you never saw again / never posted again (except when they show up as a group again), and etc. Or those without brand new accounts show up and post strange dishonest lead in type posts that sort of try to lead folks down a bigoted path ... that you can blatantly see…

As soon as those metrics are exposed though, people will start hacking them by purchasing older accounts, etc.

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

#440

Post by zpallin »

ryankemper wrote: post #207
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…

> I'm also not sure how much The_Donald was as a community. It was very clearly a real community, as you can see evidence from the fact that they migrated to thedonald.win when Reddit made it clear that they wouldn't be treated fairly. > So you'd be in your other community and one day they all show up and down votes and the vitriol begins... it was no mystery that this happened, it was spoken of openly in The_Donald…

> they migrated to thedonald.win

An individual can migrate a forum without any assistance. Not denying that The_Donald was a community, just saying that the migration of content is not evidence of the extent to which something is a community.

> And yet Reddit happily ignores vote brigading and other negative externalities from any subreddit that toes their party line, so it seems bizarre to single T_D out.

Except T_D literally was not singled out. CTH was also banned, along with approximately 2000 subreddits.

> "we're fishing for a made up reason that lets us boot you guys"

Reddit has listed "communities that promote hate" as a reason to ban subreddits for at least 5 years. Not sure how this is "fishing for a made up reason."

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