Reddit takes a new direction • Hacker News Board

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#71

Post by freehunter » Mon, Feb 13, 2012, 6:28 PM UTC

smokeyj wrote: post #65

jshen wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"now the masses (and/or governments) dictate the content you are allowed to post" Isn't this an exaggeration? There is a lot of room between "everything goes" and North Korea. Stopping exploitation of kids is one notch up from "everything goes".

I can't help but feel this policy only serves lip service to "Stopping exploitation of kids". Personally, I think Reddit has the right to have whatever policies it wishes -- but this 'think of the children' argument is the same one that will be used to pass SOPA like regulation. I don't think a sane person would suggest that exploiting children is acceptable, but the answer then becomes -- to what degree to we sacrif…

If you don't like reddit's policy, it's pretty easy to take their open source code and set up your own clone. You'll likely run into the same issues at some point, though. There are always people out there that will want to do things that are incredibly detrimental to your business. Now that reddit is mainstream and one of the largest communities on the web, they're set up to be a huge target. You don't get popularity or legitimate money without policies regarding unsavory content.

In reddit's case, "think of the children" is a perfectly legitimate cry when the policy specifically is designed to stop exploitation of children.

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#72

Post by sophacles » Mon, Feb 13, 2012, 6:29 PM UTC

jasonkester wrote: post #63

People tend to think of online communities as democracies where the freedoms they're accustomed to from their normal lives apply. So when a post gets deleted by a moderator, people tend to think of it as a freedom of speech issue. There's a whole constitution out there specifically defending anybody's right to create a pro-Nazi subreddit, and to otherwise post anything they please on the site so long as it's not ille…

* And I think we can all say the result is a lot more pleasant than a less tended place such as Reddit or 4chan.*

I am honestly not sure we can say that at all. I thoroughly enjoy both hn and reddit, for completely different reasons. Sure, from a strictly legal standpoint, it isn't censorship or a constitutional issue, but at the same time, the "anything goes" attitude in places like 4chan and reddit allow for a lot of creative gems and interesting discussion. People instinctively recognize that while you may have to schlep thought he muck to find those gems, it is still important to have an "anything goes place". People will feel betrayed when they put time and effort into making the community what it is, and suddenly the rules are changed on them -- all their effort has been co-opted or may be co-opted, for something they don't want. It feels slimy.

(yes we are all aware there is no contract or law or whatever, blah blah legalistic point missing, but the decency of it is still in question).

All that being said, I also like the curated, well organized topical community of HN, because sometimes I just don't want to wade through the crap, but that occasional preference switch doesn't diminish either form of community building.

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#73

Post by kijin » Mon, Feb 13, 2012, 6:33 PM UTC

baddox wrote: post #52

kijin wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exchanging child pornography is illegal in the United States (as well as in many other countries). There's nothing unreasonable about stating in your TOS that you can't have a subreddit the very existence of which breaks the law. Sure, people can try to reopen these subreddits under different names, but once the rule is in the TOS, they can be reported on and shut down as a matter of routine. The same applies to ware…

The whole point of this policy shift is that it's no longer about child pornography, just like the jailbait banning wasn't about child porn. The post makes it clear that they've always followed the law regarding child pornography, but that they're now voluntarily banning all suggestive or sexual content involving minors (so, not just child porn). Their main excuse is that they don't have the resources to moderate on…

The fact that the admins are painting their policy with a broader brush doesn't mean that the policy is any less about child pornography than it was before. If "creepy" was the new standard, /r/creepy and /r/wtf should be on the chopping block, too. If "no nudity or sex" was the rule, /r/nsfw wouldn't have survived.

What a subreddit's policy says is less important than what actually gets posted there and/or what people expect to find there. Would you go to /r/truejailbait, /r/lolicon, or /r/preteen_girls expecting to find pictures of adults in non-revealing outfits? No, the expectation is that those subreddits will contain child porn or something similar.

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#74

Post by ubernostrum » Mon, Feb 13, 2012, 6:37 PM UTC

josefresco wrote: post #4

What 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.

You may find it instructive to read the final link in the post -- "LambdaMOO Takes a New Direction"

:)

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#75

Post by blhack » Mon, Feb 13, 2012, 6:40 PM UTC

Anderkent wrote: post #69

blhack wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Trade? Not really Well then you are incredibly naive. Do you understand what "exploit" means? They're exploiting either the naivety of the children taking these photos, or the naivety of the people who posted them to the internet. The damage isn't finished being done after the photo has been taken. The damage happens in the way that these photos are then used. Imagine doing something foolish in school and then being…

>Well then you are incredibly naive. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html : When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." please. >Do you understand what "exploit" means? They're exploiting either the naivety of the children taking these photos, or the naivety of the people who posted th…

>I don't find anything wrong with a teenage girl being teased about a photo she posted to the internet.

Well that's telling.

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#76

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Feb 13, 2012, 6:45 PM UTC

kijin wrote: post #45

throwawaymar2 wrote: post #2

I 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_.

Some people, myself included, object to banning "kiddie-fiddler fiction", no matter how disgusting it is. The law should not make judgments of literary quality, and literary quality is the only grounds for treating Lolita differently from some (but perhaps not all) of the amateur stuff. Besides, no actual child was abused in the production of these works, unlike with films and pictures with actual underage models; an…

[deleted]

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#77

Post by redthrowaway » Mon, Feb 13, 2012, 6:50 PM UTC

kijin wrote: post #56

alecco wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? Reddit had a very strong stance aginst CP already. And there's a lot of rules broken on /r/trees so it's far from safe. Like meetups to exchange or people giving tips. That's not legal in US and happens quite often there. Same with /r/atheism, a lot of their content can be labeled hate speech under US law. (IANAL)

You're right, "latest change of policy" is not the best way to characterize Reddit's stance on CP. But breaking rules in a subreddit is different from having a subreddit where the only possible means of participation is to break the law by posting links to CP. If everybody obeyed the rules in /r/trees, that subreddit might still contain interesting content. If everybody obeyed the law in /r/jailbait, that subreddit s…

Way back in my 888chan raiding days, we took special pleasure in tormenting Kimmo Alm and his legion of pedopals over at anontalk. We regularly got hosts to dump him, payment processors to drop him, and when that failed (or we were just bored), we'd DDoS him. We'd have months-long trolling sessions where we would get ourselves promoted to wiseguys, then wreak havoc on the site in whatever manner struck our fancy. This is a fairly long-winded way of saying I am not a supporter of pedophiles or CP.

That being said, none of the jailbait subreddits had any CP on them. Those who claim that this was a move against child pornography and child exploitation are being disingenuous. There was no child porn nor exploitation. What there was was suggestive pictures of minors. The content was distasteful, not illegal.

Now, I firmly support reddit's right to ban those subreddits on whatever grounds they choose. What's more, I think it was the right move to make. I am disheartened, however, to see people conflate the content that was removed with child porn. The images on those subreddits were largely pulled from facebook and the like. Yes, there were a couple subreddits devoted to the so-called "model" agencies where clothed children were photographed in suggestive poses, and I find that creepy and distasteful in the extreme, but it is not porn, any more than the Victoria's Secret catalog is porn.

It doesn't do anyone any good to use disingenuous language to conflate the issues we're talking about. Reddit got rid of about a dozen creepy and distasteful, but fully legal subreddits devoted to suggestive pictures of clothed minors. Despite my misgivings about censorship and free speech, I support this decision. That does not, however, mean that I am willing to use dishonesty to make those subreddits seem worse than they were, or argue that this was a decision about preventing child exploitation. It simply wasn't. This was about removing subreddits that the majority of redditors found distasteful and a black mark on reddit. It was about avoiding another PR boondoggle like the one that followed Anderson Cooper's report. That's all. It need not be any more than that for it to still have been the right decision.

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#78

Post by alecco » Mon, Feb 13, 2012, 6:50 PM UTC

JonnieCache wrote: post #70

alecco wrote: post #12

Reddit 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…

> Bastion subreddits like /r/AskScience and /r/Truereddit are reduced to junk and fads. Check out http://www.reddit.com/r/depthhub where they take a different approach: it's a meta-reddit where they link high-quality discussions from the various niche subject-specific reddits. A random example that's on there right now: /r/ludology discusses the tension between plot and choice in games.

Sure, but for how long?

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#79

Post by Apocryphon » Mon, Feb 13, 2012, 6:52 PM UTC

barclay wrote: post #17

starfox wrote: post #5

Doesn'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.

My heart goes out to the censors who have to deal with user submissions (as opposed to network censors). I can only blanch at the job that people who manage Google Image Search have to deal with.

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#80

Post by a_redditor » Mon, Feb 13, 2012, 6:52 PM UTC

jasonkester wrote: post #63

People tend to think of online communities as democracies where the freedoms they're accustomed to from their normal lives apply. So when a post gets deleted by a moderator, people tend to think of it as a freedom of speech issue. There's a whole constitution out there specifically defending anybody's right to create a pro-Nazi subreddit, and to otherwise post anything they please on the site so long as it's not ille…

I think you're missing the point of the users who see this new rule as a negative mark against reddit. The admins have always been supportive of allowing any content that is legal, even up to a very specific definition, which is why these now removed subreddits were allowed to exist for so long. Lots of people are making the slippery slope argument, saying things along the lines of "how long before they ban /r/trees?", which is a marijuana-based subreddit. In response, the community organizer, hueypriest, said this:

>They'll ban /r/trees when they pry it out of our cold dead hands.

You can imagine why it might be frustrating to people who would expect them to approach all content with as much vigor as they do in the defense of /r/trees.

The way I understand it, and the way it has been explained by the admins, is that policing the kind of content that is now not allowed had taken up a significant amount of their resources, and it was becoming unsustainable. However, a lot of users clearly see this as a sign that the admins are backing down as a result of legal pressure and also for the purpose of preserving the image of the community.

For users of old, this is a rather new phenomenon, and it is somewhat offputting. If it was solely a question of sustainability (how much time are they wasting policing the content?), that would probably be acceptable, but it's difficult to believe that it is the sole reason for the rule.