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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

#241

Post by IvyMike »

baby wrote: post #98
teraflop wrote: post #30

This article dramatically understates the magnitude of the shitstorm that is currently unfolding. Check out http://www.reddit.com/r/all/ if you feel like seeing all the ugliness. (And if anyone has any doubts that this is ultimately about harassment, count how many of the posts on the front page (and their comments) are made up of personal attacks and/or obscenities targeted at CEO Ellen Pao.) I don't fault the Reddi…

I never understood why reddit was so lenient with its community. There are so many racists and hateful subreddits, that attract more and more people like that, that makes the community as a whole worse. I'm really glad that moderation actions like that are taken, and I'm sad that people reply to that by "harassing" the CEO... Hopefully such people will get frustrated by such events and will eventually leave reddit. N…

> I never understood why reddit was so lenient with its community.

I liked that reddit bent over backwards to allow a wide variety of opinions, even ones that were ignorant or hateful. I viewed it as a noble stance.

But once upon a time, the "ugly" subreddits were ignorable and mostly self-contained. (At least to me, usually)

> that attract more and more people like that, that makes the community as a whole worse.

Yup. This trend surprised me--the recent exponential growth of some of the toxic hate subreddits. I guess I was naive. The uglier subreddits more and more frequently show up on /r/all, the users would encourage each other to post more frequently, and there was a thriving community built around the hate. It struck me as mentally unhealthy for all involved--the rapid innovating of negativity and the stoking of mild opinions into full on hatred.

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

#242

Post by jokoon »

I really wonder if there's not some money involved into those subreddits. It seems pretty easy for a PR company to just create fake accounts and build a popular subreddit and pretend that "the reddit community is angry".

I'm really starting to doubt that plain users can put so much energy in hating fat people, and I'm really dubious that it would create such chaos.

I wonder if the popularity of reddit has not brought some attention from PR groups.

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

#243

Post by freebsdgirl »

[deleted] wrote: post #223
jfuhrman wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please stop spreading this nonsense. I expected better from HN. >constantly banning and deleting anything disagreeing with her viewpoint about her law suit. There are multiple posts on multiple reddits, each with thousands of points and comments that were not deleted. Some posts were deleted by sub moderators(not the same as Reddit staff or Pao) on some subs because they were offtopic and were being vote brigaded and…

[deleted]

So do a search on reddit, look to see how much Pao-hate remains that is weeks/months old. It's pretty obvious that this was some BS rumor cooked up by conspiracy theorists.

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

#244

Post by IndianAstronaut »

philwelch wrote: post #209
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…

Previous Reddit CEO's have made lots of statements about wanting the site to allow relatively free expression, aside from things like doxxing and pedophilia. Ellen Pao has instead talked about turning Reddit into a "safe space", which is a common euphemism for eliminating dissenting viewpoints. FPH in and of itself isn't the most defensible or tasteful subreddit, but they're going to start by banning the least defens…

Oddly, theh still kept subreddits from reddit's "nigger network" in place. r/greatapes and r/coontown

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

#245

Post by freebsdgirl »

Goronmon wrote: post #112
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…

Reddit's userbase seems to feel especially threatened by Ellen Pao, and it's hard for me to believe that the difference is anything rational. Well, she has basically said that she wants to start cleaning up the "objectionable" sides of reddit. Plus, there is a strong sentiment that content that's critical of her (even the less hateful stuff) has been removed often in the past.

Just because the volume of hate has been turned up to 11 does not in any way mean that the majority of Reddit users feel this way, and this is something that many people seem to be forgetting.

Take a look and see how much reddit gold has been gifted recently. Reddit is doing just fine.

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

#246

Post by oldmanjay »

honestcoyote wrote: post #194
shard972 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't find mind difference between the conduct of 3rd wave feminists and a lot of the misogyny and racism I see online.

Every time I see this accusation against 3rd wave feminism, I realize the poster has no idea what 3rd wave feminism is. 2nd wave is the one which frightened insecure men, and had some strong anti porn and anti sex messages from a few proponents. 3rd wave, in short, is why don't we all get along, sex is awesome, and if we help men with some of their problems with toxic masculinity, then everyone is better off. edit: H…

yeah all that needs to happen is men need to be fixed for women to be happy. it works for dating, why wouldn't it work for society?

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

#247

Post by thaumaturgy »

jacquesm wrote: post #186

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 c…

> 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.

I think this is the key thing that's really got everyone all in a tizzy. There are a pile of subreddits that the vast majority of Reddit users would like to see gone: topics that aren't just politically divisive, but are offensive for the sake of being offensive. Instead, the only thing that's consistent about Reddit's decisions to police subreddits is that it's inconsistent. Reddit's administration looks like they're generally OK with whatever's on the site up until it gets some kind of exposure elsewhere and only then does it get banned, and then the reasons given for it don't make any sense given the site as a whole.

I think Reddit is actually in a unique position to start cleaning up their site. They don't have any real competition at the moment and they have a huge userbase. They could probably institute and enforce new consistent site-wide policies and actually get away with it. But this blindfolded "pin the ban on the subreddit" game is only succeeding in irritating their users and making the admins look ham-handed.

On a side note, I was a little disappointed to see kn0thing's name prominently on the announcement. He's always seemed like a smart, level-headed guy. I'd genuinely love to hear from him how the subreddit banning policy makes any kind of sense. (Alexis, are you lurking here?)

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

#248

Post by freebsdgirl »

bramgg wrote: post #151
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.

> Most of 4chan left in response. Many alternative chan sites were started, including 8ch.net. A very small fraction of the worst bored on a bad website left to join an even worse website. Don't kid yourself.

I keep hearing this from that group.

GamerGate seems to think that they are the majority of users on any given site. They're convinced that Twitter is going to fail if they leave. It's pretty amazing how much they misunderstand the scale of any large social platform.

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

#249

Post by freebsdgirl »

EC1 wrote: post #158
UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you seriously trying to blame the victims of the bullying and suggest they disconnect from the internet..? I literally cannot comprehend where you're coming from.

This isn't real life. It's access via a screen. In real life, my argument wouldn't stand. On the internet, you are given tools to weather the storm. Shitty people will always exist. Everyone else now has to suffer as casualties of the wide net cast in hopes of eliminating a vitriolic idiots because of a few victims.

Internet hate can often turn into real life hate. Witness: SWATing, emails to employers, ordering pizzas as a "joke".

Not to mention, the number of death threats and threats of sexual violence is climbing at an alarming rate, especially for women and PoC.

I have no idea why people think it's socially acceptable to say things on the internet to people that you wouldn't say to them IRL in front of a police officer.

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

#250

Post by olefoo »

teraflop wrote: post #30

This article dramatically understates the magnitude of the shitstorm that is currently unfolding. Check out http://www.reddit.com/r/all/ if you feel like seeing all the ugliness. (And if anyone has any doubts that this is ultimately about harassment, count how many of the posts on the front page (and their comments) are made up of personal attacks and/or obscenities targeted at CEO Ellen Pao.) I don't fault the Reddi…

The magnitude of an online shitstorm is never as big as any of the people involved believe it to be.

This is reddit in the act of growing up. And it's about time and a a good thing in my opinion.

I like that I manage my filters well enough that I visited reddit several times today and was blissfully unaware of this particular bit of drama.

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