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Reddit bans subreddit group “r/DonaldTrump”

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Re: Reddit bans subreddit group “r/DonaldTrump”

#761

Post by willcipriano »

wvenable wrote: post #667
willcipriano wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I'm not talking about Reddit specially. The cultural pendulum travels back and forth so one day, sooner than you think, the people you disagree with will make the editorial decisions for the major social media platforms. If you want to make it the rule that it's fine for platforms like that to remove their political opponents, by all means I just suspect you or your children will regret it.

You didn't address my point. What about undermining the concept of ownership? You're saying that if I produce a website I should not be allowed to control what is posted there? Who is going to enforce that? I suspect you or your children would regret that sort of thing as well. Perhaps the issue isn't that black and white.

I think you are missing the point because you are thinking too short term. Reddit likely won't exist/won't be as popular in a decade or two, the current owners would still own it but it won't be part of the cultural zeitgeist in the same way. Think AM Radio, Cable TV, Friendster or MySpace. Instead it will be replaced with something else, that something else might not even be called social media, and that thing will be controlled by people with a different political ideology than who currently control Reddit.

I don't know how old you are but do you recall the mid to late 90s/early 2000's in the US? Back then we had to fight so shows like South Park could be shown on cable television (a private platform) due to the fact that the general consensus among the population was that content like that offended their personal and religious values and should be prohibited. Those exact people won't be in power again, but people similar to them almost certainly will. Moves like this hand them a weapon to use against you.

Re: Reddit bans subreddit group “r/DonaldTrump”

#762

Post by nomel »

davesque wrote: post #647
kr99x wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're okay giving someone else the power to declare something "a threat" and sacrificing your rights to neutralize it? China is perfectly happy to declare all kinds of opinions threats to their way of life and disallow them from being spread. What's different? You are not thinking it through . An imperfect analogy to help make the point: You can't put a backdoor in encryption "just for the good guys" because ther…

Your analogy doesn't hold up. "Encryption" is not a place or a thing. It's a fact of nature. It's a mathematical truth. Anyone can take advantage of it once it's been discovered and disseminated. That cat cannot go back in the bag. The US government is a unique thing that we risk losing control of if we don't act now to defend it. Social media platforms are single things or entities that can revert policies once a si…

> can revert policies once a situation de-escalates

This is rarely observed. See all of the legislation and policies that have remained, and even expanded, after 9/11. Politicians tend to make laws, not remove them. See the tax code for a good example of asinine infinite expansion.

Re: Reddit bans subreddit group “r/DonaldTrump”

#763

Post by michaelmrose »

ravenstine wrote: post #326
michaelmrose wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tor hidden services now for drugs AND crazy. Alternatively freenet not just for pedophiles anymore!

Admittedly, I don't know what you're getting at precisely. The dark web is certainly an alternative, but it's not exactly a viable one. Tor is basically the manifestation that every right can be abused in some way, especially with low moderation.

Think of the availability of decentralized services that are hard to ban as a pressure relief valve for good and bad things. If we we ultimately make it to hard to share legitimate things those things go underground long before they go away.

If we look and find that freenet and tor hidden services are only full of kiddie porn, drugs, and crazy we haven't swung to far towards censorship.

Right now the crazy is right in the open and hidden services are only for things that are actually already illegal like child porn so it is premature to suppose we are being too restrictive. Based on the fact that we almost lost our democracy we probably need to Crack down more on the hate, lies, and inducement to violence.

When you have to go somewhere secret to hear someone suggest we need to massacre some jews we may be approaching an actual balance.

Re: Reddit bans subreddit group “r/DonaldTrump”

#764

Post by snowflake_ptr »

vsssk wrote: post #733
snowflake_ptr wrote: post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no evidence for election fraud due to a combination of officials and media intentionally not searching for it, and events that make it difficult or impossible to determine that fraud actually ocurred. As an example of the latter: Georgia election officials intentionally deceived journalists and (Republican) observers into leaving a vote-counting event by lying to them and telling them that they were done for…

> Georgia election officials intentionally deceived journalists and (Republican) observers into leaving a vote-counting event by lying to them and telling them that they were done for the night, then pulling out hidden containers of ballots and counting them[1] This is a joke, right? Did you even watch the video from the tweet you're citing? The video states that ballots were placed in containers because counters tho…

It doesn't matter whether the containers were "hidden" or not as long as they were counted without observers present. This is pedantry to the point of intentionally avoiding the point.

You didn't read the other sources I linked, which contain sworn statements from two observers, as well as articles published by several news stations stating that observers (and news) were told to go home because they were done for the night. Resuming counting after observers and news have left is intentionally deceitful, and no rational person actually interested in a fair democratic system would claim otherwise.

> liar

Assuming ill intent. You aren't interested in holding a dicussion, just labelling. Typical anti-intellectualism coming from the political party that won the election.

> seditionist

Look up the definiton of that word before using it: "Overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that tends toward rebellion against the established order." Mind-blowingly false - I neither said nor implied any sort of rebellion. You're literally just using the worst labels you can think of, without any truth to them whatsoever, to avoid actual conversation.

Re: Reddit bans subreddit group “r/DonaldTrump”

#765

Post by mudil »

throwawaysea wrote: post #691
lamontcg wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The left wasn't being actively encouraged and incited by the sitting President.

Can you please provide evidence for the President inciting violence? I would also say that there are leftist politicians who are encouraging and inciting criminal acts. See this recent tweet from AOC ( https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1334184644707758080 ), where she excuses activists acting illegally because the "polite language policy game" (her words) didn't work for them. This is no less an act of incitement than T…

Exactly. Remember when this was OK? https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1047935416182235136?s=19

Re: Reddit bans subreddit group “r/DonaldTrump”

#766

Post by dang »

cultus wrote: post #252
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is one of the methods used by Russian government to silence the opposition. Though the platforms are usually privately owned, they all 'independently' decide that some content can't be allowed on them. Same will happen with the US. Sad.

Yeah, it's so sad that the poor fascists are being oppressed. They only tried to do a little coup and now everybody is being mean to them and hurting their feelings. Good job posting this under your real name.

You can't attack other users on HN like this, regardless of how right you are or feel you are. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules. Burning this place down is not an option.

Edit: given that your recent comments have been this shockingly abusive:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25681577

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25681549

... I've banned your account until we get some reason to believe that you want to use this site as intended. That level of abuse is deeply not ok.

No, I'm not siding with liars-fascists-traitors. We'd ban any account that posted this way. Being right doesn't give you any excuse to behave like this, and no matter how wrong your enemies are, it doesn't give you the right to destroy the commons. It's not in your own interest to do that either, but that's another story.

Re: Reddit bans subreddit group “r/DonaldTrump”

#767

Post by xref »

gfodor wrote: post #32
typon wrote: post #12

Irrelevant. Most of the original users of /r/theDonald migrated theDonald.win, which became one of the top websites in the US in terms of traffic. They're behind Cloudflare and constantly DDoSd these days it seems like it. Moreover, they've gotten threats from their ISP that they have to delete certain posts or be shut down. (which seems scary to me) Also, please don't judge me, I just have a morbid curiosity to see…

Same. I've long worried lurking there was going to cause more harm than it's worth (for example, by letting me inadvertently slip into extremism) but the ability to predict what happened this week so easily and warn people about it who considered going was well worth that risk. Also I read there they are losing their SSL cert or something, so that might be how centralized, non-legal authority manages to shut them dow…

You’re not required to have an SSL cert behind cloudflare anyway, CF provides the cert the browser sees. You then put a self-signed cert on your origin and CF will accept it.

Re: Reddit bans subreddit group “r/DonaldTrump”

#768

Post by notahacker »

gfodor wrote: post #471
simias wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These website clearly radicalize some people. I too lurk from time to time on thedonald.win and far-right subreddits, you can see that over there reality is completely distorted, calls to violence are constant and they just feed off each other's insecurities, fears and hate. Nothing good comes out of these places, regardless of where in the political spectrum you position yourself (except maybe downright fascists). L…

You claim "nothing good comes out of these places" - that's a strong claim to make. Here's my argument: having this stuff out in the open does have benefits. Most people lurk. Lurking these sites has a lot of benefits despite the risk of being drawn into radicalization: - It allows you to truly understand the motives of these kinds of people, and predict what they will do. - Understanding these motives allows you to…

If you're sufficiently motivated by the prospect of disarming an insane conspiracy theory in the minds of someone you care about to actually want to read and understand it, you [i] can certainly seek it out on obscure cult websites without seeing it recommended in your favourite social media feed and [ii] are potentially better off getting it second hand complete with rebuttals.

The people with slightly watered down but directionally parallel beliefs certainly exist in huge numbers, but they're the reason why such places are so harmful; they're much easier to radicalize than deradicalize, and they're the ones getting the content recommended to them or being swept along by the enthusiasm other people who share some of their views seem to have for it. And it'd actually be easier to understand their justifiable grievances if they weren't encouraged to connect them to pizza parlours or Jews.

Re: Reddit bans subreddit group “r/DonaldTrump”

#769

Post by bra-ket »

dfxm12 wrote: post #570
neogodless wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my perspective, every article on Reuters included the phrase "claimed without evidence" in regards to election fraud. For me, trusting Reuters, that is sufficient information. From a believer's perspective, articles mentioned affidavits, eye-witness testimony, court cases being filed, and important, trusted people saying something along the lines of "there is evidence the courts are not even considering!" Presum…

they may have changed their mind I disagree. There's no way they would have changed their minds. It's just an excuse. A thin veneer of plausible deniability while they willingly keep their heads in the sand. The simple explanation is no one is that stupid, that fascist, but, maybe they are. Maybe this is the effect of a decades long campaign by conservative politicians & pundits to constantly gaslight America & try t…

>maybe they are

or maybe liberal propaganda is very effective.

Re: Reddit bans subreddit group “r/DonaldTrump”

#770

Post by michaelmrose »

bfieidhbrjr wrote: post #420
ianbutler wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am of the potentially unpopular mindset that we need to get our hands dirty to preserve our freedoms from these people. Worrying about being a gatekeeper when these people gladly, and openly, threaten our peace and lives is ridiculous. Let's shut them down, shut them out and generally rebuke them. History shows that higher order ideals generally need to be preserved with actions when words have failed, and make no…

I agree but there are 300 million in the US. The actual insurrectionists are like... 200 people? Maybe 2,000? Shutting down anyone talking pro trump in the whole country will have downsides, and just make them more angry. Prohibition isn't an answer that will work. Hopefully sending all of the insurrectionists to jail will help.

There are actually more like tens of millions of people who support replacing our democracy with autocracy on the basis that they believe we are stealing their country from them.
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