My biggest concern over all this is that the policy change came so quickly after the SA thread (similar timeframe as the Anderson Cooper clip). Even though startups and usually praised for moving quickly, I agree complete with the OP that this can be a major directional change (positive or negative) for Reddit overall. This kind of stuff should be thought over long and hard, rather than come down from their parent company. Reactionary policies that sprouts from avoiding bad PR will be good for the short term, I just hope they thought it all out what they will do in the long term.
Reddit takes a new direction
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Re: Reddit takes a new direction
#12Reddit is changing. It's currently in a renewed and stronger Eternal September. Bastion subreddits like /r/AskScience and /r/Truereddit are reduced to junk and fads. The hope for the group of moderated subreddits (Republic of Reddit) didn't really take off, it's just a handful of submitters.
The top voted comments on threads about censorship are mostly 1 to 3 months old users. And now reddit (had to) surrender to a decadent SOPA-supporting forum and a bunch of trolls from /r/ShitRedditSays (wich starts to look like a *chan long troll instead of a bunch of ultra-feminists).
Sure, a lot of questionable/creepy subreddits shouldn't be there. But where's the line? And who draws it? Also, isn't this an ongoing process? Those subreddits can reopen in minutes with more subtle names. The censorship whack-a-mole is pointless.
It's weird how reddit was a bastion for resisting SOPA/ACTA but fear mongering in US can take over a site. It seems that's the real frontier and we are losing. Next up /r/trees and /r/atheism.
Like so many times before it's time to move on. I wish the best to the owners/admins, they were cornered and probably had a tough choice. And I sincerely hope the new users enjoy this new reddit.
Re: Reddit takes a new direction
#13I confused about why he thinks it ironic that Nabakov is banned... I mean, it got grandfathered in when child porn laws were written, somehow, but it is certainly fiction about a paedophile, right? Anything that bans other kiddie-fiddler fiction while allowing _Lolita_ is quite obviously inconsistent, and those in favor of this inconsistency probably ought to examine why they like _Lolita_.
>those in favor of this inconsistency probably ought to examine why they like _Lolita_.
There is a lot of fiction from the perspective of non-sympathetic characters. If doesn't mean that those who appreciate the insight the fiction provides into the character, or the character's circumstance, are advocates of the character or the circumstance itself.
Re: Reddit takes a new direction
#14What about utilizing the community to police this undesirable content? I'm sure that opens up other exploits but if the community wants to stay healthy, it has to take responsibility for itself and not just rely on the admins to come up with a magic algorithm that will solve the problem.
The problem is that the 'community' is now so large that you have a subset that considers things appropriate that the wider group doesn't.
So either the small group gets to do things that may damage the larger site (and be illegal), or the larger group squelches the smaller group's freedom by singling them out. It's a lose-lose situation from a purely community standpoint.
Realistically, I support the message that they're sending - That child sexualization is blanket banned because it's too resource intensive to define and monitor shades of gray, and it's a unique issue. The very active marijuana, racism, or even black hat netsec communities may support illegal/gray-area things, but are far less likely to get the site branded as a kiddie-porn hive, which would basically be a death-penalty to the community, or attacked various governments.
Sometimes admins just have to make some executive calls to protect their business, even if they're hypocritical from a strict standpoint. I'd say reddit's defacto bill of rights is still pretty strong for a web community.
Re: Reddit takes a new direction
#15Reddit is changing. It's currently in a renewed and stronger Eternal September. Bastion subreddits like /r/AskScience and /r/Truereddit are reduced to junk and fads. The hope for the group of moderated subreddits (Republic of Reddit) didn't really take off, it's just a handful of submitters. The top voted comments on threads about censorship are mostly 1 to 3 months old users. And now reddit (had to) surrender to a d…
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Re: Reddit takes a new direction
#16What about utilizing the community to police this undesirable content? I'm sure that opens up other exploits but if the community wants to stay healthy, it has to take responsibility for itself and not just rely on the admins to come up with a magic algorithm that will solve the problem.
This isn't a workable solution without more massive changes to the way reddit works.
Instant account creation, plus complete anonymity, plus groupthink inside of subreddits...
The first "community police action" of reddit would probably be all the Battlefield 3 fans removing all the Call of Duty subreddits.
Re: Reddit takes a new direction
#17Doesn't every website that gets used by the unwashed masses eventually have to deal with this problem? How does facebook or youtube deal with it? How did AOL deal with it? Is the issue just that Reddit is run by a smaller team than these larger companies?
Youtube handles it via whack-a-mole. A friend of mine used to work in their community dept, and would tell horror stories about the things she'd see people put up.
Re: Reddit takes a new direction
#18I confused about why he thinks it ironic that Nabakov is banned... I mean, it got grandfathered in when child porn laws were written, somehow, but it is certainly fiction about a paedophile, right? Anything that bans other kiddie-fiddler fiction while allowing _Lolita_ is quite obviously inconsistent, and those in favor of this inconsistency probably ought to examine why they like _Lolita_.
It wasn't grandfathered in; it's unconstitutional, in the U.S., to ban Lolita . It would be pretty unfortunate if literature couldn't even seriously deal with the subject! (Incidentally, it's pretty hard to read Lolita as being pro -pedophilia; if anything, it's an extended, mostly negative investigation into the protagonist's psyche, although many pages in literary journals have been spent arguing over how to interp…
The First Amendment is pretty clear that freedom of speech/press is protected only from Congress and legislation: "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press."
Companies and/or websites can ban almost any speech or writing they would like. It's not unconstitutional, because corporations aren't considered a governmental/Congressional body.
Re: Reddit takes a new direction
#19It's simple, shutdown anything criminal and keep the rest open.
Re: Reddit takes a new direction
#20What about utilizing the community to police this undesirable content? I'm sure that opens up other exploits but if the community wants to stay healthy, it has to take responsibility for itself and not just rely on the admins to come up with a magic algorithm that will solve the problem.
Reddit isn't one community, it's sort of like usenet, there are lots of sub-communities that can easily be oblivious and invisible to one another.
This is the reason I scoff when people try to describe an average "Redditor". With the sheer amount of traffic coming through their site it's impossible to come up with an accurate generalization of what the community as a whole feels, even with the small percentage of traffic actually commenting and voting.
I would like to see a lot more emphasis be put on the decision between serving the will of the users, establishing a set of ideals that Reddit chooses to run things by, or a mixture of the two.