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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

#131

Post by jimbob45 »

striking wrote: post #9
jimbob45 wrote: post #7

So between Reddit, YouTube, and Google News, we’ve got a bunch of websites that have become unbelievably and visibly corrupt but whose business models are so difficult to replicate and navigate that no one else can do what they do.

There are plenty of alternatives that lean towards freedom of expression at all costs. I think the possibility of building another thing like Reddit has been proven (even if less popular and on a smaller scale), IIRC r/the_donald ended up moving to their own Reddit clone.

Plenty of alternatives, none that can scale, financially or otherwise.

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

#132

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

antiterra wrote: post #126
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But everyone says "oh you're missing the context" when challenged on their hateful rhetoric, and no targeted group enjoys being told they ought to die. I don't really see why anyone should be allowed to spread hate speech, even if they don't mean it literally or it doesn't "read darker".

The problem is that a significant chunk of the community believes that it's not hate speech but simple hyperbole in response to uni-directional injustice. It's easy to string match, bans/deletions can be instant and abrupt. They see the quick removal of their post and compare it to what they perceive as genuinely hateful posts that stay up because the post cleverly avoids violations that are easy to include in conten…

And I'm not saying you're wrong. Lots of people do think their hate speech is simple hyperbole, or that it's justified by misdeeds of the group they hate. But what's the point of a rule against hate speech if you're not willing to tell those people no?

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

#133

Post by apta »

antiterra wrote: post #68
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?

To be fair to their intentions, the the cultural meaning is different based on social context. This is why successfully policing content on a global or even national social media site is nigh impossible. When a woman is recounting frustration at being talked over during a meeting and says "kill all men," there's a non-literal connotation based in a belief in patriarchal suppression. When a man says "kill all women" i…

Or we can agree that both statements are wrong, and we should not wait and see the effects of allowing one over the other (we already are seeing dangerous effects however).

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

#134

Post by kilo_bravo_3 »

Chris2048 wrote: post #111
kilo_bravo_3 wrote: post #13

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…

> "MAH RAIGHT" > MAH FREEZE PEECH Mocking the southern accent?

[flagged]

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

#135

Post by jaywalk »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #66
jaywalk wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't think that's fair. It's hardly unprecedented for a website to explicitly ban unapproved opinions, so if that was what Reddit really wanted, why wouldn't they just do it?

They desperately don't want the perception that only approved opinions are allowed.

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

#136

Post by Yetanfou »

antiterra wrote: post #68
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?

To be fair to their intentions, the the cultural meaning is different based on social context. This is why successfully policing content on a global or even national social media site is nigh impossible. When a woman is recounting frustration at being talked over during a meeting and says "kill all men," there's a non-literal connotation based in a belief in patriarchal suppression. When a man says "kill all women" i…

> When a woman is recounting frustration at being talked over during a meeting and says "kill all men," there's a non-literal connotation based in a belief in patriarchal suppression. When a man says "kill all women" it reads darker, based on a belief that men subject women to violence specifically based on their gender/sexuality.

This might have been true once but the ascent of fourth-wave (misandrist) feminism has made short shrift with the assumption that women who say "kill all men" have a different intention than men who say "kill all women". In both cases it is most likely not to be taken literally, in both cases (humoristic intentions excepted) the message has a dark underpinning. Where in the "kill all women" case there might be a background of literal truth, in the "kill all men" case there is a background of wishful thinking, an idea that society is better off without men, that men are evil and unredeemable.

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

#137

Post by atomi »

meowface wrote: post #89
antiterra wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair to their intentions, the the cultural meaning is different based on social context. This is why successfully policing content on a global or even national social media site is nigh impossible. When a woman is recounting frustration at being talked over during a meeting and says "kill all men," there's a non-literal connotation based in a belief in patriarchal suppression. When a man says "kill all women" i…

I agree "kill all women" reads and is darker for a variety of reasons, but I don't think either statement should be acceptable. I think a high percentage of people who would say "kill all women" would also reply that they're being non-literal and sardonic, but I don't think that would make it acceptable. Both phrases should trigger human review and a ban, in my opinion. Even without the literal meaning, vitriol towar…

Reddit admins have their own window of discourse and it's certainly colored by personal biases. But, it should say a lot that "Let's kill all the lawyers" would likely result in a ban.

Reddit risks closing the window of discourse so tightly that it becomes a Facebook, Instagram or Tik Tok. The problem for Reddit, of course, is that there is already a Facebook, Instagram and Tik Tok.

I've already left the platform.

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

#138

Post by salmon30salmon »

ebg13 wrote: post #78
salmon30salmon wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Reddit itself has no means of monetization. This is a classic confusion about the nature of currency and networks. Direct monetization is one kind of success but not the only one. For one thing, a hate prophet doesn't need money to be successful. A hate prophet needs _listeners_ to be successful. Reducing access to accidental listeners who then get sucked into a brainwashing machine is reducing access to success. A…

If this were a serious logical debate, I wouldn't use it. It is indeed a fallacy, but it expresses a phenomenon in a way that is generally understood by most people. That is, acceptance of one link in a chain of events makes the acceptance of the following links easier. The fallacy is two parts, one that the above is even true (it doesn't make it easier in all cases) and that it leads to a form of reductio ad absurdum (gay marriage will lead to people marrying cats etc).

Sometimes logical fallacies get a point across in a way that is the most succinct.

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

#139

Post by bryal »

bra-ket wrote: post #119
Nitrolo wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a post breaking down a few details of the ban wave: https://www.reddit.com/r/redditsecurity/comments/idclo1/unde... As you can see a big majority, over three quarters, of banned subreddits had less than ten users, and 99% had less than 5000 subscribers. It's very possible that the other 82% are distributed over the larger, more popular subreddits which are not encouraging hate speech. As an example, if someone…

most of the popular subreddits encourage hate against police and Trump supporters, just see how much cheering you get when there is a video of BLM assaulting someone wearing MAGA hat, or a white "Karen" (typically middle-aged white woman) is humiliated or assaulted by mob, or an officer sprayed and blinded when arresting some looter. These threads full of raging hate are reaching Reddit front page on regular basis, w…

Right, because hating someone for being a jew and hating someone for being a racist are totally equivalent. Both sides are bad! Only us enlightened centrists realize that you have to take everything in moderation, and must both hate and accept jews and racists equally much!

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

#140

Post by GaryNumanVevo »

gfodor wrote: post #26

Just imagine what they could accomplish if they just shut down the site!

Definitely could get 100% of hatespeech taken off it they shut it down. Not to mention the absolute productivity boost to everyone working from home.
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