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Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’

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Re: Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’

#21

Post by kumarvvr »

mc32 wrote: post #19
kumarvvr wrote: post #5

Wait, doesnt reddit have control over it servers? It surely can revoke such rules. Looks like all this drama is to give an illusion of control and free speech. Am I missing some other dynamic at play?

Of course, but that would break some trust where as of now most seizures are of renegade subs. Here if they seize normal subs just because they protest a bad decision by management has the potential of alienating lots of people.

At this point reddit is like FB, Everyone will grumble but continue using it.

Re: Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’

#22

Post by shaftoe »

dvhh wrote: post #15
kyrieeschaton wrote: post #3

Do we need scare quotes around "censorship" when reddit is telling them particular names are unmentionable in any context?

Some people would argue that "censorship" would not apply to a private company owned platform. That only governments and their agents are qualified to perform act of censorship.

Are you sure you're not thinking of arguments about first amendment protections instead of censorship?

Re: Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’

#23

Post by Sebb767 »

kyrieeschaton wrote: post #3

Do we need scare quotes around "censorship" when reddit is telling them particular names are unmentionable in any context?

In this case, yes. For one, the original title has them. Secondly, as stated in the article, Reddit denies the allegations:

> [...] admin u/landoflobsters explains that it was not the company’s intention to remove any mention of Knight’s name, but that there had been “overzealous automaton” when it came to preventing doxxing and harassment. The admin explained that an internal error had led to the suspension of a moderator who had posted Knight’s name, and that the company had “communicated clearly” with the affected party as they resolved the situation.

A now fixed error would not count as censorship. He might be lying, but there's enough reasonable doubt to allow for quotes IMO.

On a side note, though, it's funny that the article choose to put quotes around “communicated clearly” as well.

Re: Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’

#24

Post by unethical_ban »

kumarvvr wrote: post #5

Wait, doesnt reddit have control over it servers? It surely can revoke such rules. Looks like all this drama is to give an illusion of control and free speech. Am I missing some other dynamic at play?

Just like armies technically could curbstomp civilians during protests, but many countries realize that's a bad idea.

I don't doubt admins and "powermods" are often the same people, and I'm not defending the morality of reddit as an org. However, the etiquette is that mods have total control over their subs as long as site-wide rules and real laws are not violated.

Re: Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’

#25

Post by tornato7 »

adzzzz wrote: post #11

I'm still shocked Reddit is allowed into the wider ecosystem of tech infrastructure. Between hosting explicit gore content and very extreme pornography with borderline legality at best (Including under Alexis's and Steve's leadership allowing a jailbait subreddit to continue for years) I would have thought they'd be booted from AWS etc.

Reddit must be spending 10s of millions of dollars a year with AWS. They're not about to boot them off without a court order.

Re: Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’

#26

Post by ryandrake »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #18

Reddit feels very Soviet lately. Everything is heavily manipulated and it seems like users are aware of that fact but are powerless to change anything.

They can always just stop using Reddit. Digg went this way, too, and it ended badly for them.

Re: Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’

#27

Post by arbitrage »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #18

Reddit feels very Soviet lately. Everything is heavily manipulated and it seems like users are aware of that fact but are powerless to change anything.

> lately

haven't been around reddit for long then, have you

Re: Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’

#28

Post by cecilpl2 »

sixothree wrote: post #6

Reddit as a whole is less useful since comment sections were demoted from first class citizens to something barely usable. I think they saw imgur as a threat and wanted to better replicate that experience.

Can you expand on this? I haven't noticed any change in comment section usability and I've been on reddit for 10+ years.

Re: Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’

#30

Post by maxk42 »

unethical_ban wrote: post #16

reddit admins responded and specifically said their automod got aggressive, remediated it, and that talking about the admin is alright as long as it isn't a dox attempt or threatening behavior. Keep this in mind as you see other people claiming falsely that anything is still being censored.

Reddit's automoderator is not a wild animal that gets "aggressive." It's a simple regex: https://www.reddit.com/wiki/automoderator/full-documentation Someone edited the rules to deliberately block any mention of the name in question site-wide.
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