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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

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not censorship. Freedom. Private property includes the freedom to restrict what occurs on that property. Reddit is private property. Same goes for Hacker News. Let freedom ring! edit: guess people don't like freedom :-( Would Hacker News be "censoring" me if they deleted my submission to TIMECUBE? Isn't it "MAH RAIGHT" to proselytize my sincere and deeply-held beliefs about TIMECUBE? Are you CENSORIZING MAH FREEZE PE…

And we're free to call out their hypocrisy (in selective application of censorship)

Kicking someone off your platform for calling everyone a "leftist cuck" or some other bigoted "ironic" comment is not hypocrisy.

It is basic human decency.

Do you have an example of someone who was "censored" inappropriately?

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

#52

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.

Ignoring the fact that a private entity should be able to censor as they see fit on their own platform, Reddit is a business, it's not a charity. If a subset of users are hurting their business model, driving multiples of other users away from the site, or creating legal liability far in excess of the value the problematic subset generates, then Reddit absolutely should be patting themselves on the back for mitigating risk by removing those problematic users. It's a sound business decision.

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

#53

7000 subreddits only accounted for an 18% reduction? What the heck is going on with that website.

It's a website with 138,000 subreddits. That sounds like a pretty conventional distribution, where 5% of the site contributed 20% of the problem. That's about what you'd expect from the Pareto principle, which says that 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

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

#54
post #14
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?

Race & religion are sometimes deeply entwined, see Jewish.

Imagine if Jewish ethnicity was a protected class but Jewish religion was not. How would that even work in practice?

"I was not discriminating against the Jews on account of being ethnic Jews but rather on account of their Jewish faith, your Honor!"

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

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not censorship. Freedom. Private property includes the freedom to restrict what occurs on that property. Reddit is private property. Same goes for Hacker News. Let freedom ring! edit: guess people don't like freedom :-( Would Hacker News be "censoring" me if they deleted my submission to TIMECUBE? Isn't it "MAH RAIGHT" to proselytize my sincere and deeply-held beliefs about TIMECUBE? Are you CENSORIZING MAH FREEZE PE…

They are free to enact censorship, you could say. And users are free to identify where that censorship has taken place, react to it and let it inform our opinion or use of reddit.

What is an example of censorship that should shape my opinion?

I've only ever seen bigots who think transgendered people are icky and can't stop being "ironic" about it getting "censored".

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

#57
post #39
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything I've seen suggests that removing platforms actually does reduce this stuff. It's analogous to the argument that there's no point trying to reduce suicides; people are just gong to do it some other way. But no, if you put a barrier on a bridge, suicides really do go down in total. If you make something even just a little bit more difficult, you reduce it.

I don't think “places to be hateful on the internet” are in short supply.

> I don't think “places to be hateful on the internet” are in short supply.

Neither are ways of committing suicide, and yet stopping people from accessing _obvious_ and _easy_ options does reduce the number of people doing it.

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

#58
post #54
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is religion immutable when political affiliation is not?

Race & religion are sometimes deeply entwined, see Jewish. Imagine if Jewish ethnicity was a protected class but Jewish religion was not. How would that even work in practice? "I was not discriminating against the Jews on account of being ethnic Jews but rather on account of their Jewish faith, your Honor!"

Classic case of /r/politics where if you say anything negative about Israel (the state and its government) then you are automatically flagged and banned as an antisemite

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

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And we're free to call out their hypocrisy (in selective application of censorship)

Kicking someone off your platform for calling everyone a "leftist cuck" or some other bigoted "ironic" comment is not hypocrisy. It is basic human decency. Do you have an example of someone who was "censored" inappropriately?

The accusation is in the other direction, that some people aren't being censored despite saying equally obnoxious things. I've seen quite a few popular and non-censored Reddit comments talking about "Rethuglicans", or explaining that huge swaths of the population are irredeemably evil.
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