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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

#131

Post by watwut »

throwaway_gdc wrote: post #128
DavidVoid wrote: post #106

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…

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. Th…

How does banning those reddits only after shootings prove it is about groups liberals sympatize with? I mean it shows mostly that reddit bans after shootings.

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

#132

Post by k33n »

DavidVoid wrote: post #106
sebmellen wrote: post #4

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…

I’m amused when people post flat out lies like this. T_d was a positive sub that loved Trump. They were pretty “rah rah” about him. It drove the anti-Trump people crazy, which is why it was banned. That’s the only reason. Just go cruise the comments on /r/politics for proof. They call for actual bloodshed and for the death of Trump and his supporters every single day.

TDS is very real. It causes people such as yourself to parrot flat out lies that have no basis in reality — and you seem to actually feel good about it. It’s bizarre and I suspect history will look back on it as a mass hysteria event.

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

#133

Post by andrepd »

valvar wrote: post #60
xevrem wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

honestly, i would say the banning of thedonald is clearly a response to The Paradox of Tolerance rather than not supporting free-speech. you cannot be tolerant of the intolerant if you want free speech to survive.

No, the utterly ridiculous "paradox of tolerance" is just a bad cope for people who truly do not believe in free speech. "Free speech" which only applies to your predefined set of approved speech is not free speech, but a monstrous parody of it. The purpose of free speech is to enable dissent, not to affirm the status quo.

Painting an opposing view as "utterly ridiculous" is not the best way to start an argument. But moving on.

It's always interesting to see that, when actually probing deeper, almost no-one believes in truly unrestricted free speech, even people who proclaim themselves as free speech champions (such as yourself). For example, can I slander you? If I own a newspaper, can I try to convince my readers that you're a pedophile? Can I tell someone to commit murder for me (after all, it's just speech, it was the other guy who pulled the trigger)? Can I tell a suicidal person that they're worthless, nobody will ever like them, and they should just kill themselves? Can I lie under oath? Can I psychologically abuse my children? If you responded "no" to any of these questions, you also don't believe in absolute free speech, now it's just a matter of arguing where to draw the line.

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

#134

Post by FpUser »

sgt wrote: post #95
mdonahoe wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN isn’t exactly a bastion of free speech either

How so ? I can't recall any major free speech issues on HN. Being downvoted and having your comment hidden is not exactly something HN can do much about, seeing that it is up to the users.

>"is not exactly something HN can do much about"

They actually can do "much" about it. Just turn the feature off. Downvoting in my opinion is very unhealthy habit.

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

#135

Post by itsthewrongspe »

DavidVoid wrote: post #106
sebmellen wrote: post #4

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…

If misinformation and hate are why t_D was banned, why are r/latestagecapitalism (openly hateful and violent / ban dissenters),r/blackpeopletwitter (openly racist, spread misinformation), r/socialistrifleassociation (openly fomenting revolution) allowed to exist?

Reddit just bans speech it doesn't like. It has nothing to do with hate -- only who you hate. Hating conservatives, Republicans, Whites? That's all fine on reddit. Hell, it's fine here. How long will this comment last?

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

#136

Post by Recursing »

pulkitsh1234 wrote: post #11

This hurts so much, Goes on to show the lengths people will go to portray themselves as being politically correct. Whenever I get thoughts of doing something to change the "system", I just end up getting discouraged and disheartened to the core because of what happened with Aaron. The one thing which stood out to me was that this guy spent time interning in government offices just to understand how it operated from i…

This comment by spez seems to show that Reddit never considered him a founder though, the title was given to him by PG https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/d2njs/til_th...

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

#137

Post by hnracer »

DavidVoid wrote: post #106
sebmellen wrote: post #4

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…

Which is what /r/LateStageCapitalism, and many other subreddits, do. Only it's allowed because they are not right wing.

The anti-free speech claim is made not by judging the ban of t_D in isolation, but by looking at how their policies are selectively enforced across their platform in order to silence right-wing opinions and perspectives. In particular, support for Trump. A sub like /r/politics, dedicated primarily to anti-Trump content, is fine though, even if their users are wishing him death after getting COVID and are actively promulgating conspiracy theories.

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

#138

Post by cies »

sebmellen wrote: post #108
cies wrote: 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 (…

The line where free speech ends is pretty clearly delineated, and that's when it crosses over into criminal or violent action in the "world of atoms". Almost all of your examples can be prosecuted based on their direct effect on the real world (or representation of a crime, such as with child abuse videos), not the content of their speech . The difference is crucial. To take things to an extreme, if I say "all XXXX s…

So you want law to protect people that say "all X should be killed", then X is not demonstrably super violent/intolerant in the first place?

Let's say someone campaigns that all people that have gay sex should be killed: do you want this "speech" protected?

Well: I dont. That's why I think "intolerance of the intolerant" is good. Most law books in developed democracies agree with me. White supremacists, racists, fascists, extreme wahabists/salafits dont. They want to incite hatred/violence (to non-violent/tolerant people). I'd say shut 'm down and/or dont give platform.

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

#139

Post by sebmellen »

claudiawerner wrote: post #121
bfieidhbrjr wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 physica…

Your point about child abuse is ridiculous. We prohibit child abuse precisely because it is a physical act. If I said "I will whip my child 50 times", and didn't do it, that would not be child abuse. It becomes child abuse once it is a physical act.

You make the faulty presumption that speech itself can be a form of abuse. This is where free speech absolutists such as myself would disagree. Speech is a protected class of expression precisely for this reason: it cannot be abusive.

To argue that child pornography is a form of speech is rather ridiculous, if we define speech as "the communication or expression of thoughts in spoken words". A form of expression, sure, but there are limits on forms of expression. I cannot choose to stab people as a form of free expression, nor torch a building.

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