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Reddit takes a new direction

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Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#151

Post by TikiTDO »

ugh wrote: post #116
fein wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Pedos can’t trade their images anymore (whether legal or not)." The only thing that this move ended up doing was ensuring the use of private subreddits for this act. People aren't going to change simply because someone told them that what they already knew was wrong is now more wrong. The content will still be traded on reddit (even though I highly doubt that cheese pizza pm's actually happened very often), just not…

I’m worried about private subreddits. Admins, however, can see what’s going on inside them so I don’t see that as much of a problem.

From Wikipedia: "There are over 67,000 subreddits to peruse, with the default set being (as of October 18, 2011[4])." I could not find a specific number for the admin staff, but given the fact that wiki lists 11 staff members for reddit that number can not be particularly high; in fact the reddit admins steam group has 6 members. I sincerely doubt that anyone is capable of filtering 10,000 subreddits every day in search of offensive material.

Finally, even if somehow reddit manages to completely and utterly block all things they deem to be CP related, these people will just move to another, probably harder to track venue. All in all, this entire move is rather pointless action in response to people that want the feelgood sensation of "Protecting the Children."

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#152

Post by repsilat »

potatolicious wrote: post #142
ugh wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For fucks sake. Is that really so hard to understand? Pedos can’t trade their images anymore (whether legal or not). That’s the extent of the limitation. How the fuck is that supposed to turn Reddit into something radically different? It’s this one tiny thing. It’s not some big change that changes Reddit. It’s not so hard. Some people just want to be deliberately obtuse. The slippery slope is a fucking fallacy!

> "The slippery slope is a fucking fallacy!" Ugh. Here we go again. The fact that the slippery slope argument can be a fallacy doesn't mean that all claims of slippery slope is automatically a fallacy. People seem to think the fact that this word exists means they can use it in all contexts and be right. [edit] And the slippery slope angle has materialized in this particular case. No sonner had the jailbait subreddit…

The "slippery slope" argument can be made more strongly here - a few months ago /r/jailbait was shut down by the admins. There was a lot of hand-wringing about it, but they were eventually swayed by opinion and some media attention.

This time around there was a post on SomethingAwful talking about a few more subreddits, and they were all (including several that were explicitly 18+ content only) shut down immediately. For good or ill, we're not in danger of slipping down that slope any more, we're demonstrably sliding already.

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#153

Post by scanr »

ugh wrote: post #87
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.

Hi Ugh. How do you reconcile your view that this is a simple issue with the fact that it seems to be resulting in a large amount of discussion with a wide variety of views represented, some of which are diametrically opposed. I would contend that the evidence suggests that this is not a simple issue.

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#154

Post by neutronicus »

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…

/r/ShitRedditSays is entirely sincere. I've been reading it for a while, and they mean what they say.

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#155

Post by flomo »

phillco wrote: post #60
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 little sad, because there was definitely a sense, a few years ago, that Reddit was pretty much user-centered and therefore fully unrestricted, content-wise. You can choose what subreddits you belong to, or make new ones for whatever subject you want. The admins simply created the platform and set the defaults. Freedom! But at the same time, everyone still felt like redditors, even if you were on /r/investing o…

That to me is exactly the core issue. It's not as if these people were staying in their obscure subreddit, they were leaking out into advice forums and posting IAMA pedo threads and so on, scoring upvotes due to typical young male contrarianism. It was all creating the general impression that this was acceptable behavior which was commonly discussed by Redditors.

(I saw a post from a sixteen year old boy describing himself as a "ephebophile" because he liked girls from school. It's just bizarre that kids are learning this sort of inside jargon and using it describe completely normal behavior.)

From a broader community perspective, there's no reason to hang out a sign saying "creeps welcome here". They'll show up on their own, and its not as if Reddit needs their traffic.

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#156

Post by Locke1689 »

I'm not against Reddit's move, but I do think they're being more than a little naive if they think it will stop here.

hueypriest (Reddit admin) says:

/r/trees isn't in remotely the same legal area as CP stuff. Not even close. They'll ban /r/trees when they pry it out of our cold dead hands.

And yet, facilitating a drug transaction is almost definitely illegal. Posting torrent links is at least legally dangerous. Sure, these things haven't become problems yet, but neither were the other things a couple years ago.

What the Reddit admins are saying right now is that anything goes, as long as it doesn't represent a plausible legal threat that can be waged against them. This is fine. The problem is that Reddit doesn't know that they're saying this. They think it's about CP, but it's not, it's about legal threat.

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#157

Post by ojosilva »

squirrels wrote: post #112
owenmarshall wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As plenty of people have said plenty of other places, there's a huge difference between illegal content and distasteful but protected speech. Further, the legal definition for child pornography is, in many cases, not what people expect. The EFF has a primer that touches on this: https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/adult If reddit begins cracking down on protected speech like you'd find in /r/trees and /r/atheis…

You're right, there is a huge difference between between illegal content and distasteful but protected speech. Yet you seem to be lumping them together in your post... Inside your link it says, for something to be considered "obscene": >The Miller test stems from Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973), in which the US Supreme Court held that material is obscene if each of the following factors is satisfied: >1) Whe…

> Now, people looking at those pictures may be sexualizing these images in the head

No, it's not only on their head. It's written right underneath the photos by redditors, ie: "my d* is so hard right now". So the picture by itself may be harmless, but the post as a whole puts children in a highly sexualized context.

To make matters worse, threads sometimes include links to fully illegal material on some download server. The bikini photos sometimes are just the thumbnail...

I doubt that's the case with Toddlers & Tiaras.

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#158

Post by Locke1689 »

ugh wrote: post #87
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.

They're really not. They're for banning these subreddits because they don't like their content, not because they may represent a legal threat.

They, at best, misunderstand the issue at hand.

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#159

Post by diminoten »

Locke1689 wrote: post #156

I'm not against Reddit's move, but I do think they're being more than a little naive if they think it will stop here. hueypriest (Reddit admin) says: /r/trees isn't in remotely the same legal area as CP stuff. Not even close. They'll ban /r/trees when they pry it out of our cold dead hands. And yet, facilitating a drug transaction is almost definitely illegal. Posting torrent links is at least legally dangerous. Sure…

The slippery slope you describe simply does not exist. "First they took the CP, and I said nothing..." is not a valid concern, primarily because CP has always been an issue, and whenever it's come up it's always been removed from Reddit. This change in position is not nearly as large as it seems.

Contrast, as you seem to want to, with /r/trees. How many posts in /r/trees get taken down due to their questionable legality? How many posts in /r/letstradetorrents (apocryphal) get taken down due to their questionable legality? None and none. The nature of CP on the Internet is unique, and not viewed similarly to anything else on the Internet. Reddit isn't saying "as long as it doesn't represent a plausible legal threat that can be waged against them", they're saying, "as long as it's not CP, and as long as it's manageable through an ad-hoc process."

Due to the SomethingAwful attack, or due to some other, unknown reason, the volume of CP was too high to continue to deal with it on an ad-hoc basis. That is all.

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#160

Post by [deleted] »

Locke1689 wrote: post #156

I'm not against Reddit's move, but I do think they're being more than a little naive if they think it will stop here. hueypriest (Reddit admin) says: /r/trees isn't in remotely the same legal area as CP stuff. Not even close. They'll ban /r/trees when they pry it out of our cold dead hands. And yet, facilitating a drug transaction is almost definitely illegal. Posting torrent links is at least legally dangerous. Sure…

[deleted]
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