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

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631–640 of 970 posts

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

#631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run a video game clan with a fairly active discord channel -- the stance I've taken is: there are no rules beyond: 1. nothing illegal (includes cheating at games) 2. no racism / homophobia / transphobia 3. no harassing other members 4. everyone has different beliefs and come from different parts of the world -- if you are offended, ask the offender to stop, otherwise see a mod so far there are around 50 people in t…

The how is simple - 50 people on a semi-private system is a totally different league than Reddit, with millions of users and public. Similar to your 4-rules stance, Reddit has Reddiquette and Content Policy and for the most part, people obey the policy. It's at the fringes where there are problems. It's not the one Satanist that's the issue, it's when there are large groups of members in the Church of Satan who don't…

> It's not the one Satanist that's the issue

The one Satanist(cos) is me, so that's definitely not the problem ;)

edit: I agree that scaling might end up being an issue. Some other clans are run with much stricter rules and it seems to work well for them (one I know of is run like a paramilitary organization and has thousands of members). I wanted to experiment by going in the opposite direction and letting people be who they are and just cut loose at the end of the day.

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

#632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Free speech is not a god given right to spread hate, misinformation, antisemitism, misogyny Free speech is a natural right. In a stat of nature one can say whatever they want. Rights are not some game of mother-may-I with the government.

In a state of nature, others can slap your speech right out of your mouth.

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

#633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever been to any of Reddit subs?

It isn’t perfect. Most major subs uphold a reasonable measure of decorum. It’s a big place, I am sure you can find examples of everything you see on TD.win. The point is Reddit is trying to enforce its rules and maintain reasonable standards (IMO)

> Reddit is trying to enforce its rules and maintain reasonable standards

From Reddit:

https://www.reddithelp.com/en/categories/rules-reporting/acc...

> Marginalized or vulnerable groups include, but are not limited to, groups based on their actual and perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, immigration status, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, pregnancy, or disability. These include victims of a major violent event and their families.

> While the rule on hate protects such groups, it does not protect all groups or all forms of identity. For example, the rule does not protect groups of people who are in the majority or who promote such attacks of hate.

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

#634
post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How effective has "confronting fascism with the truth" ever been? When white people were afraid of black violence, Martin Luther King showed them black people peacefully hand in hand with ministers in their Sunday best, walking toward Selma and remaining nonviolent even as they were met with violence. When straight people saw gay people as dangerous deviants, Harvey Milk showed them gay people in their families, jo…

Those were IRL things that happened before people even had computers in their homes. We're talking about modern-day web forums. How effective has "confronting fascism with the truth" ever been, when the fascist is not being upfront about it, but rather posting hundreds of subtly racist memes and dog whistles to reddit?

> Those were IRL things that happened before people had computers in their homes. We're talking about modern-day web forums.

The internet is an IRL thing, and these things also happened before electric cars. Unless you have some reason to think people's reaction to the truth is somehow fundamentally different on the internet than on TV or newspaper, I really don't see what your point is.

> How effective has "confronting fascism with the truth" ever been, when the fascist is not being upfront about it, but rather posting hundreds of subtly racist memes and dog whistles to reddit?

Is there a reason you can't post memes with the truth? Anti-racist memes work just fine. In a similar vein, infographics have been extremely effective. The internet is one of the best tools for spreading the truth in existence.

Subtly racist memes and dog whistles are created by censorship. If a person believed "black people are criminals" without censorship, they wouldn't bother with dog whistles, they would just say, "black people are criminals". How effective do you really think censorship is if the entire point of subtlety and dog whistles is to get around censorship? And if someone says "Black people are criminals", I can respond with, "While black people are convicted of crimes at a higher per-capita rate than white people, this is a result of poverty: black people and white people at similar income levels commit similar numbers of crimes."

What do you do when someone posts a subtly racist meme that hints that black people commit more crimes? Censor harder? The solution you're proposing takes us to a place where racists just agree on what codewords mean what in their own private spaces, say whatever they want in public using their secret codewords, and call us crazy if we figure it out and censor them.

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

#635
post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Find an instance of a threat of violence, regardless of context Doesn't the fact that finding instances of violent rhetoric among alt-right posters, regardless of context , sorta make the case that maybe this is an endemic problem and not a purely political suppression? There are a lot of really hateful people among that group, in ways that just aren't true for other politically aligned communities. I mean, the Dir…

> Doesn't the fact that finding instances of violent rhetoric among alt-right posters, regardless of context, sorta make the case that maybe this is an endemic problem and not a purely political suppression? No? Because in an anonymous online forum anyone can just hop in and drop a “... kill em all!” message and whoops, there goes your forum. It’s impossible to prevent, at best you can only react to it. You are compl…

Except, again, this doesn't happen on other large left-leaning forums at Reddit. When was the last time /r/twoxchromosomes brigaded the voting at /r/news to attack an inconvenient story? When was the last time a mod on /r/relationships was banned for hate speech?

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

#636
post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit removed The_Donald from showing up in All, changed their search algorithm, and changed the number of active users showing up on T_D (they screwed up and you could see the true number on their ad buy portal). Those were all 100% admin actions to censor, not moderator actions.

And T_D should be banned years ago for blatant doxxing, brigading, and threats of violence, all clear violations of Reddit's rules. The admin has repeatedly been too scared to enforce their own rules, just doing half measures like that to pass the buck.

[deleted]

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

#637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current mods killed the_donald. The mods, not the admins, made it so that only a shortlist of approved users could post content in the subreddit. It was likely a move to push the community somewhere else.

The current mods were appointed by the admins....

No they weren't. The admins kept the original mods and were trying to work with them.

The admins even said as much when explaining the ban.

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

#638
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Both sides have free speech rights and both have outcomes that support that speech... "Free speech rights" don't apply between two private entities, only between the government and a private entity.

Which is a nice loophole when we know the battle for votes is primarily fought on social media

Doesn't the concept of freedom of speech necessitate the freedom from speech, ie. the right to remain silent? To force a company to say something they don't want to is in my opinion worse than allowing them to say nothing. I don't expect Breitbart to voice my opinions, for instance, and I don't expect Twitter to voice theirs if they don't want to.

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

#639
post #42

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> 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.

I know it was insane. But I also think /r/politics is insane.

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

#640
post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't hold your breath, especially regarding any action taken against /r/politics or an effort to make it actually politically neutral.

How would one make a political discussion group be politically neutral?

events of r/askreddit offer possible insight, some months ago someone posted a question similar to "Trump voters that will not vote for Trump again, what was the last drop?" and it became a huge post, soon after the same question was posted again by only changing Trump to Biden (in true r/askreddit fashion where popular questions are milked to death). Only one of them was removed by moderators.

A political discussion forum can be neutral in allowing equal participation to different political position. People are not asking reddit userbase to be neutral in their voting, they are asking reddit moderators to be neutral in how they enforce policies/rules.

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