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Reddit reports 18% reduction in hate content after banning nearly 7k subreddits

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Re: Reddit reports 18% reduction in hate content after banning nearly 7k subreddits

#41

Post by gruez »

GaryNumanVevo wrote: post #16
chrisco255 wrote: post #4

Since there's no objective definition of "hate content", this is akin to them patting themselves on the back for outright censorship based on their own arbitrary definitions.

They clearly outline their definition of "hate content" in their post about it. [0] They go over the methodology and dig a bit into the results. It looks like a good start. [0] - https://www.reddit.com/r/redditsecurity/comments/idclo1/unde...

>They clearly outline their definition of "hate content" in their post about it.

Am I missing something here? I read the post and it's not clearly defined at all. All they did is mention was:

>To generate and categorize the list of keywords, we used a wide variety of resources and AutoModerator* rules from large subreddits that deal with abuse regularly.

Re: Reddit reports 18% reduction in hate content after banning nearly 7k subreddits

#42

Post by [deleted] »

niyazpk wrote: post #14
gruez wrote: post #8

>The company also says that half (48 percent) of all hateful content on the site was targeting a person’s ethnicity or nationality. That was followed by their class or political affiliation (16 percent), [...] "Hate speech" now includes your political affiliation? That's news to me. I thought it's usually restricted to immutable characteristics about a person (race, religion, gender, etc.).

How is religion immutable when political affiliation is not?

[deleted]

Re: Reddit reports 18% reduction in hate content after banning nearly 7k subreddits

#43

Post by salmon30salmon »

mschuster91 wrote: post #35
salmon30salmon wrote: post #20

More accurately would be to say Reddit reports 18% of hate content moved to a different platform. This would be akin to saying "salmon30salmon saw a reduction in hate content when he stopped attending hate group meetings". While I appreciate any attempt to reduce hate, it isn't really something to cheer in this case. The goal is to reduce hate, and pushing people further into the fringes doesn't do that. Now instead…

The idea behind deplatforming hate is to reduce the reach of hatespeech to those that explicitly desire it and the platforms that willingly provide it. That, in turn, reduces the funding of the hate prophets - many German alt-righters found themselves in a serious financial crunch after Youtube and Facebook booted them off so they could only solicit for donations on their lousy-visited Telegram channels. Side benefit…

This is something I can agree with as being more useful. Anything that can be done to reduce funding to hate groups is fantastic.

But there is a real difference between using deplatforming as a means of defunding hate groups and what happened with Reddit. Reddit itself has no means of monetization. While you could certainly argue that Reddit leads to platforms that do monetize, that is a slippery slope.

Re: Reddit reports 18% reduction in hate content after banning nearly 7k subreddits

#44

Post by ebg13 »

salmon30salmon wrote: post #20

More accurately would be to say Reddit reports 18% of hate content moved to a different platform. This would be akin to saying "salmon30salmon saw a reduction in hate content when he stopped attending hate group meetings". While I appreciate any attempt to reduce hate, it isn't really something to cheer in this case. The goal is to reduce hate, and pushing people further into the fringes doesn't do that. Now instead…

> pushing people further into the fringes doesn't do that.

Citation needed.

Tautalogically, making things harder to discover literally does make them harder to discover.

Re: Reddit reports 18% reduction in hate content after banning nearly 7k subreddits

#45

Post by laurent92 »

justchilly wrote: post #25

Said differently: "Reddit banned nearly 7,000 subreddits, but left alone the ones that contribute 82% of hate content." That seems like a dismal result, practically an admission that many of the bans were unjustified and/or subs that should have been banned were not.

Very true and interesting twist of fate. I find it amusing that any group becomes very good in science only once they’re under attack. See Galileo: They defined the scientific process when they were under bigoted criticism.

In fact, the best way to ensure that a group who’s right makes an excellent demonstration of their correctness, is to censor them and tell them they’re wrong. That is how we get incredible advances of science. And that is also how huge totems become mainstream. Think « Winnie the Poo » in China, or the « 13% » number in USA.

Re: Reddit reports 18% reduction in hate content after banning nearly 7k subreddits

#46

Post by jaywalk »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #21
gruez wrote: post #8

>The company also says that half (48 percent) of all hateful content on the site was targeting a person’s ethnicity or nationality. That was followed by their class or political affiliation (16 percent), [...] "Hate speech" now includes your political affiliation? That's news to me. I thought it's usually restricted to immutable characteristics about a person (race, religion, gender, etc.).

"Hate speech" is a very specific term, and I'd guess Reddit's deliberately avoiding using it. They're targeting hate in the broad sense, the sense that they want to build communities where people are nice rather than mean.

What they really want are echo chambers where only approved opinions are allowed.

Re: Reddit reports 18% reduction in hate content after banning nearly 7k subreddits

#48

Post by haunter »

chromedev wrote: post #19

Anyone remember them saying in their ToS that hate speech is okay as long as it isn't against a group considered to be the minority?

Removed but still enforced aka we have written and unwritten rules

>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.

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