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Reddit Bans Five Communities In New Anti-Harassment Campaign

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Re: Reddit Bans Five Communities In New Anti-Harassment Campaign

#181

Post by leereeves »

jfuhrman wrote: post #171
leereeves wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They even censored https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/39ddnb/if_you_dont_... "If you don't believe in freedom of speech for those you loathe, you don't believe in freedom of speech." (1600 points and gone from http://reddit.com/r/bestof )

It wasn't even removed by Reddit. It was removed by subreddit mods who essentially have full control of a sub. Anyone can create a sub and enforce their own curation or arbitrary rules which is not the same as censorship. From the sub sidebar: >This is a curated space. >The moderators reserve the right to remove posts, users, and comments at their own discretion. If I create a subreddit where I ban all posts start wi…

How do you see who it was removed by?

Re: Reddit Bans Five Communities In New Anti-Harassment Campaign

#182

Post by astrange »

fleitz wrote: post #91
PopeOfNope wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, he was. When GamerGate happened, that's exactly what he attempted to do. He replaced most of the mods on the site within a very short amount of time and the heavy handed policing started. Most of 4chan left in response. Many alternative chan sites were started, including 8ch.net.

Touche, I stand corrected.

I recommend you stand un-corrected.

Re: Reddit Bans Five Communities In New Anti-Harassment Campaign

#183

Post by dandelany »

Kalium wrote: post #115
powrtoch wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The front page is pretty worrying. The situation seems almost identical to when Reddit axed r/jailbait: one of their more embarrassing communities started to get too much attention, its users were increasingly behaving in a way that was damaging Reddit, and Reddit decided to kill it (ostensibly for the greater good of the site). But even though that pissed plenty of people off... I don't recall the front page being t…

Pao is attempting to "clean up"... in an environment that cherishes its traditional freewheeling and unrestrained discourse. Even if the stuff getting cleaned up is just the stuff that most people agree deserves it - for some value of deserves - it's a troubling precedent to set. Some people find themselves wondering what opinions will be deemed unsafe next. The policies are not exactly clear-cut, and neither are the…

> what opinions will be deemed unsafe next.

I think this is a little dramatic. It's not about censorship of "unsafe opinions" - you are free to hold your opinion and talk about it, just not on Reddit. It's akin to a hotel owner disallowing a Klan meeting in the conference room. I think any business owner deserves that right.

> The policies are not exactly clear-cut

I dunno, the blog post seems fairly clear cut to me. It's not about blocking content, it's about blocking subreddits whose sole purpose was harassment of individuals.

Re: Reddit Bans Five Communities In New Anti-Harassment Campaign

#184

Post by bsder »

nemo1618 wrote: post #119
PopeOfNope wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, he was. When GamerGate happened, that's exactly what he attempted to do. He replaced most of the mods on the site within a very short amount of time and the heavy handed policing started. Most of 4chan left in response. Many alternative chan sites were started, including 8ch.net.

You're stating that like it's a fact. I don't think there's any credible evidence of the 4chan staff makeup changing significantly during GamerGate, other than a "leaked" IRC chatlog which essentially portrayed moot & mods cackling gleefully while rubbing their hands together like James Bond villains.

> IRC chatlog which essentially portrayed moot & mods cackling gleefully while rubbing their hands together like James Bond villains.

To be fair, I kind of always assumed that moot and mods did what they did solely for the shits and giggles they themselves got out of it.

It's not like they were running a distinguished web portal that would bring them fame, riches, and glory; they run the sewage pit of the Internet.

Re: Reddit Bans Five Communities In New Anti-Harassment Campaign

#185

Post by deciplex »

felixgallo wrote: post #150
leereeves wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They even censored https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/39ddnb/if_you_dont_... "If you don't believe in freedom of speech for those you loathe, you don't believe in freedom of speech." (1600 points and gone from http://reddit.com/r/bestof )

In what sense is it ironic? Reddit is a private corporation unaffiliated with the United States Government.

Censorship need not involve a government entity. Censorship is not equivalent to violating the First Amendment.

Re: Reddit Bans Five Communities In New Anti-Harassment Campaign

#186

Post by jacquesm »

This is probably the best illustration of the 'no broken windows' theory at work on the web. You can start a new community and keep it 'clean' from day one, but you can't let your community turn into a cesspool and then one day decide to clean it up, the inmates will be able to achieve critical mass and they'll happily burn down the asylum if they can't have their cesspool back.

What I really don't get is that they choose these 5 subreddits to ban, reddit has at least 50 (and probably more) subreddits that are arguably a lot more offensive than the ones they just blocked.

Re: Reddit Bans Five Communities In New Anti-Harassment Campaign

#187

Post by Fannon »

adamnemecek wrote: post #21
zxcvcxz wrote: post #8

I don't know how to feel about this. On one hand I'm against censorship, on the other I'm against internet bullying. /r/FatPeopleHate was engaging in both. In the end reddit is a private site that can do what it wants. Wikipedia removes things all the time and sites like 4chan remove all sorts of extremely offensive material. I'm glad the mods of the hate oriented subreddits have been shadow banned, I actually think…

> On one hand I'm against censorship, I feel like censorship isn't the right word for this but I can't think of a better one.

Censorship is when the content has to be pre-approved by an authority in order to be published at all. If content is removed after it has been published (because it violates some agreements / ethics), that's moderation or "legal-stuff".

Of course, moderation can be misused to a point where it's almost effectively cencorship. But IMHO, the order matters here.

Re: Reddit Bans Five Communities In New Anti-Harassment Campaign

#188

Post by Veratyr »

_kst_ wrote: post #23
smegel wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feminism too.

What? Are you comparing feminism to misogyny and racism?

There's a movement of people who call themselves "Social Justice Warriors" (SJWs). They engage in activities that they claim are in support of race, gender and class equality but are in fact often racist or sexist. In general they seem to be hateful people damaging the causes they claim to fight for.

The #KillAllMen, #KillAllWhiteMen hashtags on Twitter are good examples of some of their activities.

Their backwards activism is often self-branded as "feminism", giving birth to things like #WomenAgainstFeminism. The definition of feminism has become sufficiently corrupted thanks to these people that women themselves are fighting against it.

I have a feeling it's their backwards "feminism" your parent commenter was referring to.

Re: Reddit Bans Five Communities In New Anti-Harassment Campaign

#189

Post by mmalon6 »

My two cents:

1) Reddit is a business and has certain interests at stake. If they want to seriously monetize their inventory (i.e., subreddits and pages), it needs to be with content that jives with advertisers. Odious content and sub-reddits are kryptonite to advertisers. Clorox doesn't want to see their advertising next to fat-shaming/racist/misogynistic horseshit.

2) Whether or not you think Reddit is suppressing "freedom of speech" is irrelevant (I personally don't think they are). What matters to Reddit is that those who contribute objectionable content according to advertisers leave the site, either because their subreddit has been shut down or because they find Reddit is suppressing their freedom of speech. All those pages were a cost to Reddit that had no chance of making money. When they're gone, they don't have to worry about them anymore. Reddit is probably rooting for other platforms, like Voat, to get traction so that people who want to post horseshit don't linger and leave immediately.

Re: Reddit Bans Five Communities In New Anti-Harassment Campaign

#190

Post by rtpg »

gkoberger wrote: post #49
fleitz wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got to give Christopher Poole credit, he was never dumb enough to try to police 4chan. This is as laughable as trying to get rid of trolling on IRC.

Reddit is a venture-funded company with a large staff that needs to monetize. Nobody wants their ad next to a post fat-shaming someone. I don't agree with censorship, however the two sites aren't comparable.

Alternatively, Reddit is trying to build a community around a bit more positivity, and has no obligation to continue dealing with bullies and fascists.

People can express their freedom of speech elsewhere, I am extremely pleased with reddit getting rid of the most egregious subreddits

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