Reddit shuts down subreddits including r/The_Donald and r/ChapoTrapHouse • Hacker News Board

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

#861

Post by himinlomax » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 9:40 AM UTC

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.

US-style left wing, which is just utterly bizarre from a European perspective, with its deference to corporate power.

Although that's changing, because we're really busy importing as much of that nonsense as quickly as we can.

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

#862

Post by thatoneuser » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 9:51 AM UTC

zalkota wrote: post #779

dmoy wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The_Donald involved a lot of spreading their message / fake news sites / spamming across other subs and etc. Yea, I gotta say, having to previously deal with r/The_Donald brigades on another large subreddit was incredibly annoying and depressing. Can't speak to spreading fake news, but massive influxes of r/The_Donald users spamming truly vile stuff in an ostensibly non-political sub really sucked (as a moderator,…

Isn’t /r/politics completely one sided fake news to prop up the democrats???

Of course it is, along with a lot of other front page subs that are more or less the same thing (bestof is another obviously example.)

The fact that people will look at you seriously and tell you The_donald is this highly biased fake news sub yet not mention all the propaganda subs for the left... Well this is why it's such a big deal how reddit is controlling speech of its users.

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

#863

Post by stevens32 » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 9:54 AM UTC

This seems like a win for the trolls. I've cut Reddit out of my diet and I'm sure those communities were deserving of the ban, but targeting specific subreddits rather than properly enforcing whatever rule they were breaking to create a toxic atmosphere seems like the less good answer of the two.

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

#864

Post by guerrilla » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 9:55 AM UTC

basch wrote: post #683

ngold wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gotta respect the iron fist of /r/askhistorians. Probably the best sub on reddit.

The iron fist is a double edged sword in some senses. Although reddit acted as a free speech haven for a long time, it was only overall, and not ever in major specific communities. True free speech is valued because it fosters debate, and allows bad speech to be rebutted by more speech. A marketplace of ideas, and maybe more importantly, the counterspeech doctrine, are incredibly important principals in justifying th…

> True free speech is valued because it fosters debate, and allows bad speech to be rebutted by more speech. A marketplace of ideas, and maybe more importantly, the counterspeech doctrine, are incredibly important principals in justifying the existence of free speech.

No, you're missing the phenomenon of gish galloping[1]. Toxicity will overwhelm the community because it takes no effort to spew disgusting nonsense and spam while it takes significant effort to rebut it. The mythical "marketplace of ideas" only exists in presence of moderation, whether somewhat decentralized like HN or like the iron fist of places like r/AskHistorians. A literal free marketplace of ideas is a cesspool.

"A Lie Can Travel Halfway Around the World While the Truth Is Putting On Its Shoes"

[1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop

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

#865

Post by pmiller2 » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 9:57 AM UTC

SauciestGNU wrote: post #342

shakezula wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChapoTrapHouse has been laughing for months about their incoming ban, though. They knew it was coming and they've been preparing for it by migrating to other subs, moving to Discord, etc... T_D users are probably doing the exact same.

I posted on cth periodically and while I think it was banned largely so the admins could claim "balance" I don't care at all. Nothing serious happened there, the daily chat threads were fun, but it was clearly eventually going to be banned and I knew that and didn't get invested.

+1 to this. Chapo wasn't bad at all, in terms of breaking actual rules. I saw people on the announcement thread claiming it was full of tankies, and that was reason enough to ban it, but it really wasn't. You wouldn't get very far on Chapo by unironically talking about what a great man Stalin or Mao was -- though, guillotine jokes, including applying them to the necks of landlords, would certainly get you upvotes.

I never saw any actual brigading on the sub itself. Others talk about "organizing brigades through Twitter," and I think it's kind of BS to punish people for that. Reddit doesn't get to police Twitter, and vice versa.

Never saw any actual advocacy of violence against any specific person, either. Sure, there were "kill the landlords" type jokes and memes, but the closest I think I ever saw it get to actual incitement of violence was stuff like "Kissinger needs to fucking die already," or "I would prefer that Trump exit the White House feet first, in a box." You can call that whatever you like, but it's certainly not advocating violence against anyone.

Meanwhile, there's literally a Stalin meme on the front page of r/fullcommunism that says "death to capitalism." Then, there's r/latestagecapitalism, which is a toxic shithole of a sub where you literally can't say "that idea is crazy and will never work because $REASONS," because they have a blacklist of words that are "slurs" of one sort of another that they don't publish, and which will get your post removed if you try and use them.

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

#866

Post by pmiller2 » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 10:00 AM UTC

emerged wrote: post #275

Rebles wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That was the reason stated, which is not the same as it being the actual reason. This is the strategy being imposed against conservative voices at large.

Maybe turnabout is fair play. After all, one of the main tactics of conservatives is to underfund or defund programs, then point at them and say "look, it doesn't work!" to try and get them shut down.

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

#867

Post by guerrilla » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 10:01 AM UTC

mantas wrote: post #280

andybak wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> from any subreddit that toes their party line There's plenty of right-leaning subreddits. What set The_Donald apart was how close it sailed to being outright cultishly crazy.

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.

You must have forgotten what article you're commenting on. See the title at least.

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

#868

Post by guerrilla » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 10:04 AM UTC

sixteenyearold wrote: post #836

skinnymuch wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need some sort of logic behind words and meaning. To call /r/politics or CNN etc left wing is too much. I don’t have an exact argument on hand. It just feels so wrong to subvert the expectation of a word or phrase this much to casually call stuff like this left wing. As op said: “ Edit (since I can't reply): r/politics is American liberalism, which is centrist.” I don’t care about being that specific. Just don’t c…

[flagged]

Very little of this is either left wing or centrist, nor is it representative of the generally majority of views expressed on the sub.

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

#869

Post by oska » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 10:07 AM UTC

kabacha wrote: post #828

whateveracct wrote: post #721

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly current discourse does equate those two things. Being gender critical ("gender is fake and a tool of patriarchal oppression") is equated with erasing & attacking trans people - politically these two parties do seem to be at odds.

Is discourse regarding trans-gender really necessary though? It seems something a bunch of spoiled elitist bigots would discuss as their way to express distaste for plebs and pretends it's some sort of philosophical debate. Someone's interpretation of their own sexuality or gender affects no one but themselves. You can discuss it over at /r/philosophy if your intentions are truly analytical.

> Someone's interpretation of their own sexuality or gender affects no one but themselves.

I don't feel you've really followed the debate. Some trans rights activists are demanding that they be legally defined as the sex they 'identify' with. This equates to biological men being housed in female prisons, biological men competing in women's sporting events, etc etc. It's an attack on women's spaces and the very meaning of what it is to be a woman and what women's experiences entail.

This is just a short summary but the idea that they are affecting 'no one but themselves' is way off base.

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

#870

Post by mantas » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 10:08 AM UTC

raxxorrax wrote: post #852

bobthechef wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the end state that Marxists believe will obtain (though Marx would have thought advocating for things like that odd). However, in practice, communists often support social changes that facilitate a state of affairs that is favorable to communism. They often employ the aid of unwitting supporters which is why most people who support these causes will flatly deny that they are communists because they aren't, at…

> For example, many groups that advocate the dissolution of the nuclear family or sexual revolution have a communist origin There is some history to that and I think this criticism was directed at family structures in Germany and other countries around the start of the last century. People today probably could not imagine anymore, but children at the time would have never even thought about disagreeing with their par…

Such kids-seniors relation is not a requirement of nuclear family structure at all. Somehow people managed to keep nuclear families intact with very wide range of intra-generational attitudes.

A lot of critique of nuclear family is talking specifically about family where kids are raised by parents and how that is unfair to kids who weren't so lucky with good parents. In the early soviet union, some of more radical revolutionaries wanted to just put all kids into foster homes to ensure a fair start for everybody. And prevent non-state-mandated ideas from finding a way from parents to kids. Intra-generational legacy is a touchy topic as well.