Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reddit takes a new direction

b-list.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 263 posts

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#81

Post by snowwrestler »

pilif wrote: post #25

While I agree that the world is better off without forums where people can post their child porn or similar ilk, this policy change in reddit shows that there's in inherent issue with centralized platforms. Back when there was usenet, everybody could post what ever they wanted (some news servers might not have carried the group, but there was no policing the source). Same with blogs: You wanted to post content the ma…

It's a tradeoff. If you want general-public-scale levels of traffic, you will be subject to the general public's social norms or face their wrath.

The general public did not use Usenet; the audience size was small, relative to what we see today on the WWW. Same goes with most personal blogs. And back when Reddit was not well known, they did not have to have a policy like this.

I don't think centralization has anything to do with it--if your public blog suddenly got as popular as Reddit, I bet it too would be the subject of campaigns about its content.

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#82

Post by kanamekun »

_delirium wrote: post #66
kanamekun wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's true; I was objecting to the claim that it was "grandfathered in when child porn laws were written". The reason a law couldn't ban it is because of the First Amendment.

Definitely agree that Lolita is a written text and not a visual depiction of children engaged in sexual activity. So it's not covered by child porn laws, and is still protected by the First Amendment.

But wanted to highlight that the law can ban speech, despite the First Amendment. For example, in 1982 the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that child porn was not protected by the First Amendment:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_v._Ferber

Laws can also ban material deemed obscene. The Miller test is the standard there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_v._California

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#83

Post by tomjen3 »

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…

You are right, in a legal sense, which is why there is no lawsuit over this issue.

But reddit specifically said create your own subreddit and post what you want (as long as it is not spam). That is why this is such a big issue.

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#84

Post by mbreese »

tptacek wrote: post #51
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)

There's no such thing as "hate speech" under US law. You can, for instance, proudly march down the streets of Skokie in Klan regalia bellowing about the need to "exterminate the Jews", safe in the knowledge that the First Amendment implications of doing so have already been litigated. There are (dubiously) "hate crime" laws, but they pertain to violent crime. In a similar vein, I'm not so sure about your legal analys…

Well, while you can walk down the streets of Skokie and shout "exterminate the Jews", you can't walk down the street in Winnetka and say "exterminate that Jew". I think that would fall under fighting words, which isn't protected.

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#85

Post by a_redditor »

zotz wrote: post #57
buro9 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've touched upon an incredibly grey area. Most forums will ban trolls, but therein lies the problem: define "troll". I don't know what you said, where, and in what context... but I don't give benefit of doubt on this. Nor do I think you're guilty either... all I do know is that running a community is hard, and one of the things that the people of the community look to moderators to do is to keep the peace. A diffe…

> I don't know what you said The below article was deleted from the queue in r/politics and I've been unable to post articles in politics and a few other subreddits ever since, using a particular handle from a particular IP. Ron Paul’s Challenge to the Left: http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/07/a-question-of-morality-ron... My point stands: reddit has been complicit in silencing political opinion long before it began wo…

The behavior you're describing (not being able to submit from a certain user account from a certain IP) is a result of reddit's quite sketchy spam filtering mechanism. Unless you have been notified that you've been banned from a certain community, your posts are simply being absorbed by the spam filter.

You have also mistaken the views and actions of a specific community for the views and actions of the site owners. Anyone (yes, even you) can go start a subreddit whenever they want, and restrict content however they want, even if that includes suppressing information they don't agree with or banning users with whom they disagree. The idea behind reddit is that people show their support for a specific community by frequenting and contributing to it. If you don't agree with the way a community is being run, you are free to find a better one or even to start your own.

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#86

Post by tptacek »

alecco wrote: post #55
tptacek wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no such thing as "hate speech" under US law. You can, for instance, proudly march down the streets of Skokie in Klan regalia bellowing about the need to "exterminate the Jews", safe in the knowledge that the First Amendment implications of doing so have already been litigated. There are (dubiously) "hate crime" laws, but they pertain to violent crime. In a similar vein, I'm not so sure about your legal analys…

You keep editing your post. My original "I stand corrected" is now out of it's meaning and it makes no sense to keep editing my answer. I expected better of you, tptacek.

I didn't edit it to change the meaning of your comment.

On this particular thread, I'd like to make sure my comments are as clear as I can make them: Reddit did the right thing, and the only complaint I can make is that they took too long and their reasoning wasn't great.

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#87

Post by ugh »

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…

Shit Reddit Says is pretty awesome and definitely on the right side of history. It’s not hard, it’s pretty simple.

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#88

Post by sixothree »

kijin wrote: post #28
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…

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…

One of the reasons for removing /r/jailbait originally was that users were trading illegal files behind the scenes.

I've heard of the same thing in /r/trees; Eg. seed exchanges and more.

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#89

Post by alecco »

Fukkireta wrote: post #59
alecco wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying you hate your mother, but...

I posted my qualifier not because I thought it absolved me of the associations (it doesn't, the first paragraph 'poisoned the well' so to speak, there was little I could do about it without choose not to discuss it); I did it in an attempt to show I was making the argument in good faith. I don't think I was very successful however.

Public forums are getting overrun by people like you. You are very disingenuous and doing false accusations. It's like reverse cognitive-dissonance. Reason is lost with you. Goodbye.

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#90

Post by patio11 »

Tech sometimes gets a bum rap for being a bunch of nerdy white men verging on undiagnosed autism who exude toxic body odor and equally toxic misogyny. That's an unfair overgeneralization, right? It becomes difficult to say that that is in any way unfair if our community routinely signals that its idea of a strong principled stance on an issue of major importance is to protect the rights of /r/niggerjailbait to masturbate to photos of a 6 year-old collected from someone's social networking site.

OK, so maybe you don't believe that. Alright, let me try again: suppose you're in the business of building applications which let unsophisticated Internet users exchange totally innocent information like pictures of their children, and suppose further that your ability to remain in business is in large part dependent on the government treating Internet businesses as harmless geekery which generally falls beneath the notice of the bureaucratic state. Why are you standing in chest-deep water on top of the temple to Zeus while wearing full-plate armor in the middle of a roaring tempest shouting "SMITE ME"? Do you think the likely reaction of your political representatives is going to be excising problematic content with surgical precision while leaving the rest of our industry to continue writing software in peace? Do you think your fellow citizens are going to look with favor on arguments about there being actually a lot of shades of gray in masturbatory material involving children and carefully examine the technical differences between e.g. DNS, websites, servers, subreddits, and the like when calling their Congressman's office to draft a measured, proportionate response? Do you affirmatively enjoy the prospect of having to spend multiple weeks reading about nothing other than the Save Our Pre-Adolescents Act when it gets introduced later? And when it commands supermajority support among the American polity?

Post reply on HN