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Reddit’s About page doesn't include Aaron Swartz as a founder

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Re: Reddit’s About page doesn't include Aaron Swartz as a founder

#121
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. Do you think movies of child abuse are "free speech", or recruitment/instruction videos tot terrorist organizations, or inciting violence and hate? What about Assange, he published some stuff, could that be free speech? Or violations of copyright? To me free speech is like free markets. The word does not adequately cover the implementation as boundaries do apply. There are little to non truly free markets (…

You're mixing up a lot of things. Child abuse is a physical act and isn't speech. Recruitment and instructional videos are speech. Assange is speech, but, he wasn't a journalist with protections for handling secret information. Copyright used to have a limited term before it dropped in to the public domain where it would become speech. These are all different things with their own problems.

>Child abuse is a physical act and isn't speech.

A video is a form of expression that falls under speech for all intents and purposes. There is no general caveat to freedom of speech which states that one cannot create a video of some illegal act. Child pornography seems to be the only exception in the US.

Further, metaphysically, 'physical acts' such as burning flags fall under freedom of expression, and all physical actions are themselves expressive. We prohibit child abuse because it is abuse, not because it is a physical act and therefore not speech.

The expression of copyrighted material, likewise, is speech. Disney is exercising its right to free speech by releasing a movie, even if that movie falls under copyright. Just as in the case of child porn, copying and/or distributing such media is a restriction on speech, albeit a widely accepted one.

To me, there is no way to argue that child porn and unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material isn't a kind of speech, or at least a kind of expression. It is absolutely speech, just as sharing a video of a murder or theft is speech, and just as sharing some public domain music is speech, and it is also speech that most people agree should be restricted.

Re: Reddit’s About page doesn't include Aaron Swartz as a founder

#122
post #29

As a non-American, I lost track of this case - was there an investigation into prosecutors who went after Aaron? Are these people still prosecuting other people?

Ortiz is no longer in public service, she's now a partner at a private lawfirm.

Some people believe the backlash for her spectacular over prosecution in this case prevented her from running for Governor.

Re: Reddit’s About page doesn't include Aaron Swartz as a founder

#123

Reddit is very clearly not in favour of free speech: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/reddit-bans-thedonald-and-... . Aaron Swartz was very clearly in favour of free speech: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/becausewecan . I think the reasons for this are self-evident.

If you run a forum and a user is constantly making up lies, harassing other users, and spamming misinformation then I don't think banning them is "free speech" issue. t_D should have been banned long before it eventually was imo. It actively spread misinformation and hate and made the website worse for other users. And a question for you: You say that Reddit is not in favor of free speech because it banned subs like…

Perhaps. I know that a number of objectively hateful subreddits were not banned because they were hateful of people "in the majority" (whatever that means).

An archived copy of Reddit's "Account and Community Restrictions" from the time of the ban reads as such [0]:

> 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.

The question here veers into the territory of whether Reddit is a "publisher" or "platform". Their editorial decision to ban certain kinds of loosely-defined "hate" seems to clearly point to them being an editorializing publisher of content. This, in addition to their editing of user's posts criticizing their core team [1] and other such egregious acts.

There's no compelling reason for me to believe Reddit acted in good faith.

[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20200701001008/https://www.reddi...

[1]: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/reddit-ceo-edits-user-comment...

Re: Reddit’s About page doesn't include Aaron Swartz as a founder

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any upvote/downvote concept on online content is flawed because it does not show the historical score of a post over time. Even here on HN I can post something during GMT business hours that gets scored based on the views of HN's readership at that time, but when the US wakes up the score can change dramatically. Essentially, the US west coast can have the 'final say' because of its timezone and probably larger user…

Yes, it also on a wide scale leads to silos being formed where you only share content with people you know that will upvote it this is why reddit gets a subreddit on every subject and even then those communities tend to split over and over until they get their perfect echochamber. Heck there are two primary subreddits for the Labour party in the UK - Labour and LabourUK. A year ago someone asked what's the difference…

I think it was Jess Phillips (I could be wrong) who, in an interview during the last election, claimed something along the lines of 'Labour are winning the social media war'.

They really have no idea how social media works.

(For non-UK, Jess Phillips is a Labour MP who went to see her party suffer one of the biggest defeats in their history)

Re: Reddit’s About page doesn't include Aaron Swartz as a founder

#125
reddit morphed from a fun place to visit to an absolute cesspool of the internet. With popularity came the idiot masses, and like locust they decimated the comments section and post so much inane content it’s no longer possible to find anything worthwhile. That in itself would be enough to bring a site like reddit down, but then the management also made two crucial mistakes: first, they redesigned the site and made it completely unusable (especially on mobile), and then they decided to push social agenda and turned the site from a neutral, user content centric, free-speech oriented site to a left-wing sjw haven, which served to further lower quality of content and comments.

So it’s not surprising at all that the same people who think they have the right to push social agenda they consider “correct”, also choose to remove the name of a “notorious” co-founder from the records. Personally I find the behavior of reddit’s management abhorrent and want nothing to do with them or anything they have a hand in.

Re: Reddit’s About page doesn't include Aaron Swartz as a founder

#126

Just the one question: alternatives? Not necessarily already established and crowded platform, but also free and open, privacy friendly ones that can be slowly brought to self sustaining levels by enthusiasts, so that they can attract normal users.

https://tildes.net/

The last 3 times I've tried to go back to tildes it seems like a massive political circlejerk where dissent is not tolerated.

Is there somewhere without politics being jammed down your throat in every thread?

Re: Reddit’s About page doesn't include Aaron Swartz as a founder

#127
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. Do you think movies of child abuse are "free speech", or recruitment/instruction videos tot terrorist organizations, or inciting violence and hate? What about Assange, he published some stuff, could that be free speech? Or violations of copyright? To me free speech is like free markets. The word does not adequately cover the implementation as boundaries do apply. There are little to non truly free markets (…

I would argue that your argument is nice in theory, nonsense in practicality. Who decides what speech is hateful or violent and should be limited? You, me, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un ? How easy is it to label something as hateful and ban it? Very easy. That's the flaw in your argument, the human element. The revolution to create America had violent and hateful speech towards the British crown. P…

> I would argue that your argument is nice in theory, nonsense in practicality.

Well, it already is encoded in law. Most countries prohibit hate speech and/or inciting violence, while most people consider that free speech is protected in those places. So it's already practical.

> Who decides what speech is hateful or violent and should be limited? You, me, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un ?

This gets coded in law and jurisprudence and gets enforced by police. Just like any other unlawful acts. Again: this is already how it works in most developed democracies.

> How easy is it to label something as hateful and ban it? Very easy.

See my other comment about pesticide. Please answer that question. Inciting hate/violence is quite easy to detect in practice.

> That's the flaw in your argument, the human element.

Please explain. I dont get it. It's all down to culture, true. But that does not prevent it from being pretty much universal.

> The revolution to create America had violent and hateful speech towards the British crown.

Yes. Which was behaving intolerant and violent in the first place!! Just like now with police brutality in the US: so much violence from them that expressing/inciting hate toward them becomes acceptable in my book.

> Private companies can do what they want, but in public sphere the parent poster was right free speech exists to enable dissent, not support the status quo.

Dissent have no need to exist when there is no oppression/violence/exploitation/marginalization. Hence dissent is the best example of "intolerance of the intolerant". Thanks.

Re: Reddit’s About page doesn't include Aaron Swartz as a founder

#128

Reddit is very clearly not in favour of free speech: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/reddit-bans-thedonald-and-... . Aaron Swartz was very clearly in favour of free speech: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/becausewecan . I think the reasons for this are self-evident.

If you run a forum and a user is constantly making up lies, harassing other users, and spamming misinformation then I don't think banning them is "free speech" issue. t_D should have been banned long before it eventually was imo. It actively spread misinformation and hate and made the website worse for other users. And a question for you: You say that Reddit is not in favor of free speech because it banned subs like…

There is still plenty of racism on reddit. Look up any thread about Indian, Chinese and Romani (Gypsy) people.

The Reddit admins only goes after racism when the target is people contemporary liberal media sympathize with.

They only banned anti-black racist subreddits and users after the 2015 Charleston church shooting. They only banned anti-Semitic subreddits and users after the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. They only banned Islamophobic subreddits and users after the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings.

Re: Reddit’s About page doesn't include Aaron Swartz as a founder

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you run a forum and a user is constantly making up lies, harassing other users, and spamming misinformation then I don't think banning them is "free speech" issue. t_D should have been banned long before it eventually was imo. It actively spread misinformation and hate and made the website worse for other users. And a question for you: You say that Reddit is not in favor of free speech because it banned subs like…

Perhaps. I know that a number of objectively hateful subreddits were not banned because they were hateful of people "in the majority" (whatever that means). An archived copy of Reddit's "Account and Community Restrictions" from the time of the ban reads as such [0]: > 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…

I assume those not banned subs are still there and you can link them. Because whole ton of subs were banned, not just Donald and not just right wing.

Re: Reddit’s About page doesn't include Aaron Swartz as a founder

#130
post #87

Reddit today is the opposite of what it was in the beginning. Unsurprising that they’d write out Swartz in their quest to be a friendly corporate face. Alas, a new competitor will replace it soon. Virtually no one has brand loyalty to Reddit and their audience is becoming narrower and narrower.

I don't think so. If anything, Reddit is getting bigger. In my circle nobody knew what it was five years ago. Now it has effectively become mainstream, and is being (positively) quoted on TV, etc. This is actually the second time it happens. Ten years ago people also claimed that "Reddit is dying". It wasn't, it was just changing its core audience of technical users to a broader one. And now it is doing it again.

Mainstream name recognition isn’t particularly indicative of success. In my experience, Reddit is slowly eliminating anything that doesn’t conform to a west coast American view of the world.

Unfortunately for them, the rest of the world is coming online and has a different view of things. We’re starting to see this with India and the EU. Best case scenario for Reddit is a link aggregator for a very narrow group, unless they turn off the hyper-partisan path and return to their roots.

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