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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

#301
post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Yu…

Two subreddits I like to browse from time to time are /r/darkenlightenment and /r/natalism, just to see people putting forth views that are very far from mine. I think that's the good side of a free speech stance. But individuals being singled out to slander and poke fun at is not acceptable in my opinion, regardless of whether you define it as free speech or not. There's a world of difference between simply saying "…

Your comment seems to boil down to "this speech is ok, but that speech isn't". I think the point of free speech (something that reddit stands for) is that any speech is ok, as long as it isn't outright illegal (child porn for eg). If you begin to pick and choose ("I'm happy to see behaviour I don't approve of banned"), then its not really free speech.

Here's an example unrelated to harassment. Many people strongly disapprove of consumption of drugs, including marijuana. Reddit has a forum with 750k members who actively promote the consumption of this drug. It isn't even considered 18+ only, so reddit is ok with children subscribing to this forum. Shouldn't the promotion of acts which are illegal be banned too? Shouldn't we go after this before we go after the people who are merely insulting others?

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

#302
Claiming that insulting obese people in an extremely offensive and aggressive manner for the sole purpose of personal entertainment has anything to do with free speech is something that even the average 14 year old Redditor should be able to recognize as a bit bold.

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

#303

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…

The point wasn't that they were banning subs that had offensive content, it was that they were banning subs that were actively harassing individuals. In my opinion, judging by a rough timeline I have of events, the final straw was when /r/fph went after imgur employees.[0]

What I find funny about people complaining of censorship is that the sub in question would routinely ban people for saying positive things about the people they were trying to harass.

[0] http://np.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/39bpam/removin...

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

#304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. There's a large segment of the online community in general that understands the ideal of free speech to mean that no one may ever be prevented from saying anything , in any location or context. These folks believe t…

When you claim that an extreme emphasis on free speech originates from people who secretly wish to silence others, you might be inadvertently revealing something about yourself :-) My idea of free speech is that large privately-owned communication networks shouldn't engage in censorship, just like the government. If you disagree with that, say goodbye to free speech on the internet, because most of it is privately ow…

First they came for /r/ShitNiggersSay, and I did not speak out--Because I was not an asshole.

[...]

Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me.

I feel like you're skipping over a lot of slippery slope in the middle there.

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

#305
post #28

A few weeks ago, /r/fatpeoplehate started showing up at the top of /r/all, every day. This was pretty lame, since I prefer /r/all versus home page. Anyone know how /r/fph suddenly jumped so high?

Does all of this boil down to these subreddits getting to /r/all? There are worse subreddits that the admins left alone. They should just introduce a shadowban for subreddits that excludes them from /r/all and perhaps hide links from other subreddits to the offending one.

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

#306
post #28

A few weeks ago, /r/fatpeoplehate started showing up at the top of /r/all, every day. This was pretty lame, since I prefer /r/all versus home page. Anyone know how /r/fph suddenly jumped so high?

Does all of this boil down to these subreddits getting to /r/all? There are worse subreddits that the admins left alone. They should just introduce a shadowban for subreddits that excludes them from /r/all and perhaps hide links from other subreddits to the offending one.

I suspect there's an amount of brigading from those subs. Fatpeoplehate has a whole bunch of users shaddowbanned quite often.

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

#307
I'm all for moderation, be it votes weighed by algorithms or by taking a stance on communicative quality. I'm for it, because otherwise easy gratification comments is all I'm ever going to see.

But I am very much against the "For Safety!" stance. That is not what Reddit is about. I don't think angry Redditors is for Hate, they are against Safety.

IMHO, that is pretty simple.

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

#308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia has a stated goal, a public management team engaged in discussion and debate with their users, and something resembling accountability. Reddit has the Silicon Valley's most notorious gender-baiting troll as it's head, virtually zero interactions between the corporate side and the unpaid community managers, and no clear rules on what it does and doesn't allow. Honestly, the writing should have been obviously…

> Reddit has the Silicon Valley's most notorious gender-baiting troll as it's head… What does "gender-baiting troll" mean?

It means that GW is a white male gamer (this is not supposition, hi GW!) that disagreed with Pao's discrimination lawsuit.

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

#309
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think banning the fatpeoplehate subreddit wouldn't have gone over so badly if it wasn't for the fact that Ellen Pao was already kind of hated on the site for constantly banning and deleting anything disagreeing with her viewpoint about her law suit. Even political cartoons with her driving the tank and the reddit alien with a down vote in front were getting deleted, which were quite funny and appropriate, since she…

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…

No, there really was shenanigans, I've personally seen it a few times: http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/35uyil/transp... http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/35ym8t/promote_ideas_p...

It's never very logical, someone shadowbans the first person to make a comment about Pao's husband but leaves the rest alone. My pet theory is another admin is making it look like Pao is doing it to build a case against her for her dismissal because it only creates a bigger shitstorm.

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

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you claim that an extreme emphasis on free speech originates from people who secretly wish to silence others, you might be inadvertently revealing something about yourself :-) My idea of free speech is that large privately-owned communication networks shouldn't engage in censorship, just like the government. If you disagree with that, say goodbye to free speech on the internet, because most of it is privately ow…

First they came for /r/ShitNiggersSay, and I did not speak out--Because I was not an asshole. [...] Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me. I feel like you're skipping over a lot of slippery slope in the middle there.

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