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Reddit takes a new direction

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Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#211

Post by Steko »

pyre wrote: post #189
Steko wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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"." I do not think many people "instinctively recognize" this. What I do "instinctively recognize" is that as sites like this mainstream they uniformly clean up "the muck" and that any "creative gems" lost because the community no longer tolerates everything are a…

The point people are making is that once we start making judgement calls like this there will be more and more calls from the community to make more judgement calls to increase the net and shutdown other types of sub-reddits that they disagree with. Much in the same way that once we give the government a censorship filter on the Internet to 'stop child pornography,' they've got their foot in the door to censor other…

"The point people are making is that once we start making judgement calls like this"

You act like there's a real choice here. The other choice was Reddit goes out of business. Reddit made the obvious choice.

"there will be more and more calls from the community to make more judgement calls to increase the net and shutdown other types of sub-reddits that they disagree with."

Welcome to the real world. Oh you let kids in your site? Kids have parents. Parents demand standards for places their kids go. Want to startup a reddit clone with no standards? Have at it! Let us know how it works out for you.

"Much in the same way that once we give the government a censorship filter on the Internet"

It's also the case that once you set up an infrastructure to prosecute murderers it becomes easier for the government to move from arresting people for murder to hey let's just arrest some people we don't like for reason XYZ.

That's not a legitimate argument for not having an infrastructure to prosecute murderers though.

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#212

Post by pyre »

zotz wrote: post #94
tptacek wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This shit killed Usenet. Not just child porn, but that and a lot of things like it. (I ran a Freenix-competitive server in the '90s and hacked on INN). (Disclosure: it's sad it took Reddit this long to apply this rule, and more than a little repulsive to see people up in arms about it.)

> more than a little repulsive to see people up in arms about it. Agreed. Equating free speech with the ability to trade in sexual images of children is about the low-water mark for political philosophy applied to communications tech. All that being said, I miss the pre-AOL usenet.

  > sexual images of children
The real question is how far can you stretch this definition. If you find someone jacking off to a picture of a mother holding her newborn baby, is that image now 'sexual' and fair game for censorship? What about a couch[1]?

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGU7MlDYgXA

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#213

Post by spindritf »

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.

Chasing (mostly) attempts at comedy that disagree with your sensibilities may be a fun pastime (seriously) but it has absolutely no part in any sort of struggle for moral improvement if such process is even taking place.

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#214

Post by tptacek »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #205
[deleted] wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

> Oh well So in the spirit of most people in this thread, you're going with "you disagree with my moral framework so you're wrong". Except it's even worse than that because no one (I think) thinks that these pictures are a good thing, we're just not comfortable with installing a select fews' morality as guidelines for censorship. But rather than have that discussion, you drag it into "well you either agree or you lik…

Just want to say that I deleted that "oh well" about 2 minutes after I posted it. Long before you wrote this comment. Stuff like this probably hits an RSS feed somewhere.

I'm not interested in this conversation at all. I'm not interested in debating moral relativism in the context of child pornography.

I have a sore spot regarding NTTP/Usenet, because the abuse inflicted on it to make it "anonymously" "publish" "binaries" killed Usenet, and Usenet was a far more valuable resource than Reddit is today. As a card carrying nerd (and former Usenet admin), I have trouble walking away from comments about Usenet.

But like I said, I'm not interested in the rest of this "debate". I opt out. I told you what I think, and, in the interest of clarity, I repeat: arguments in favor of retaining forums constituted for the purpose of sexualizing children are repellent.

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#215

Post by icebraining »

Steko wrote: post #165
icebraining wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How was it obvious? r/jailbait was banned, yes, but that was only after there was a semi-revolution (a mod removed and banned all the other mods, then proceeded to give an ex-mod* his powers back, who then essentially tried to fuck it up (I heard actual preteen porn was posted)). Assuming that that event necessarily means the removal of the other subreddits seems contrived. * VA, the guy who also created & mods r/pic…

How was it obvious? How was it not? Reddit exploded and started making money hand over fist. Anderson Cooper shined a light on the seedy underbelly for like 5 sec and they gave up the game. The past week's events are just ripples from that and Reddit coming to terms with the only possible decision they could have made.

What exactly did they gave up when Cooper talked about r/jailbait?

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#216

Post by drivebyacct2 »

tptacek wrote: post #214
drivebyacct2 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oh well So in the spirit of most people in this thread, you're going with "you disagree with my moral framework so you're wrong". Except it's even worse than that because no one (I think) thinks that these pictures are a good thing, we're just not comfortable with installing a select fews' morality as guidelines for censorship. But rather than have that discussion, you drag it into "well you either agree or you lik…

Just want to say that I deleted that "oh well" about 2 minutes after I posted it. Long before you wrote this comment. Stuff like this probably hits an RSS feed somewhere. I'm not interested in this conversation at all. I'm not interested in debating moral relativism in the context of child pornography. I have a sore spot regarding NTTP/Usenet, because the abuse inflicted on it to make it "anonymously" "publish" "bina…

To my knowledge it's not possible to initiate replies after a comment has been deleted and the comment was very visible when I pressed "Reply". (That, and how would I have known what it said, but whatever).

> I'm not interested in debating moral relativism in the context of child pornography.

Fine. But kindly take the rest of your judgmental, condescending insults to those of us who are having a more mature conversation elsewhere. If all you want to say is "CP BAD", fine, you shouldn't have bothered in the first place; as I've said repeatedly, we all agree with that sentiment. If you don't want to have the rest of the conversation, then your opinion is irrelevant.

>I repeat: arguments in favor of retaining forums constituted for the purpose of sexualizing children are repellent.

Jesus. Do you not get the point, do you not care, or are you incapable of defending your point so this is all you can resort to? Not a single person here is arguing that, in anything even close to that form. You are being entirely disingenuous, you know that and I don't think you care.

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#217

Post by Fukkireta »

alecco wrote: post #89
Fukkireta wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm really not sure what you mean; I tried to articulate my argument as best I could without being offensive (which is hard; the topics here are understandably emotional to a lot of people.) But I seem to have have only received superficial comments from you and my original post seems to be downvoted.

At the very least can I be told what my post did wrong and/or what norms I have broken to get this reception?

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#218

Post by learc83 »

showerst wrote: post #21
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…

Remember, slippery slope is a fallacy. I think the admins are sending the right message - This subject is blanket banned because it's too hard to sort out the shades of gray, and it brings a unique risk to the community that other things (drugs, racism, etc) just don't. I agree that they'll be playing 'ban the sub' whack a mole, but that will happen to any UGC site of scale, the important thing is (ironically) not to…

>Remember, slippery slope is a fallacy.

Not arguing with you on the merits of the OPs argument, but a slippery slope argument is not necessarily a fallacy.

It's only a fallacy if one doesn't logically connect the first event with each subsequent event in the chain.

You can check wikipedia if you'd like some examples of fallacious and non-fallacious slippery slope arguments.

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#219

Post by [deleted] »

Steko wrote: post #182
sophacles wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* 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…

"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"." I do not think many people "instinctively recognize" this. What I do "instinctively recognize" is that as sites like this mainstream they uniformly clean up "the muck" and that any "creative gems" lost because the community no longer tolerates everything are a…

[deleted]

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#220

Post by Steko »

icebraining wrote: post #215
Steko wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How was it obvious? How was it not? Reddit exploded and started making money hand over fist. Anderson Cooper shined a light on the seedy underbelly for like 5 sec and they gave up the game. The past week's events are just ripples from that and Reddit coming to terms with the only possible decision they could have made.

What exactly did they gave up when Cooper talked about r/jailbait?

That's when they deliberated for all of 30 seconds, decided they liked the million dollar checks and banned /r/jailbait.

Yesterday's announcement was merely a formalizing of that policy and application to a number of other subreddits in response to a second wave of negative publicity.

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