Reddit Bans Five Communities In New Anti-Harassment Campaign • Hacker News Board

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

#331

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 11, 2015, 3:18 PM UTC

__z wrote: post #324

cousin_it wrote: post #174

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…

>My idea of free speech is that large privately-owned communication networks shouldn't engage in censorship, just like the government. I think that's kinda weird. Does a book publisher have to publish my manuscript because "free speech" and rejecting me would be censorship? If MTV doesn't want to pick up a show is that censoring the producer's freedom? If I owned a site and then shut it down because I couldn't afford…

[deleted]

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

#332

Post by pbhjpbhj » Thu, Jun 11, 2015, 3:24 PM UTC

batiudrami wrote: post #108

ChikkaChiChi wrote: post #55

Notch has the right idea. Why not just block the subreddits you find offensive? https://twitter.com/notch/status/608706518972788736 Reddit just put the world on notice that they are willing to become user babysitters, and historically this has never ended well for the company involved.

Because it was spilling out into other subreddits. I had FPH on a filter, but you could go to any other post with a photo of someone who was overweight and there'd be an upvoted comment calling them a "hambeast".

Hambeast has to be about the least perjorative insult ever used on reddit though. If you're going to police insults then doesn't it seem a strange place to start? Wouldn't you if instigating a new policy disallowing insulting language give a warning that this was about to happen and then expect to apply the policy equally??

Neckbeard seems to be a very similar level of insult (ie mild and related to appearance) and that is widespread. Actually just calling someone "ugly" seems more offensive than either of these.

Reddit certainly have a legal right to censor whatever they wish on the site but I feel they have a responsibility to the community not to do it in an arbitrary or disproportionate way.

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

#333

Post by mattbessey » Thu, Jun 11, 2015, 3:24 PM UTC

mahranch wrote: post #315

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…

> Please stop spreading this nonsense. I expected better from HN. She may not have been removing anything, nor any of the other admins, but lnanek2 does bring up a strong point, albeit indirectly: She is hated by a majority of users on reddit. And she's hated because of her bogus lawsuit she now appears to be dragging out, and how her husband is in serious debt due to running a ponzi scheme. Her and her husband are n…

A majority of users? Please, Reddit has ~16M unique users per month. I really don't think 8M people hate Ellen Pao. Hell, I doubt more than 0.1M users know who she is.

There's no denying this is the biggest (and frankly hilarious to watch unfold) shitstorm in Reddit's history, but it is a vocal minority. There were only 5k subscribers to /r/fatpeoplehate. It was a silly move to ban it, because its clearly pissed off more than 5k people, but make no mistake, most of Reddit doesn't care.

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

#334

Post by __z » Thu, Jun 11, 2015, 3:26 PM UTC

donw wrote: post #142

eli wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm speculating but it seems like an easy outlet for that "being offensive for its own sake" mindset you see sometimes in kids and young adults. I think it's part of growing up... It just happens that the Internet allows people to focus and concentrate that negative energy.

While that's likely part of it, that's not the entirety of things. To be fair, I would wager that fatpeoplehate had its share of trolls, but I would definitely believe that the vast majority of its denizens were former fat people, and very frustrated at the obesity epidemic in the United States. Frustration leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. You know the rest. I speak here from some experience. Several members of m…

> Nobody would promote anorexia as positive

What makes you think that?

There's a fairly large community that is pro-eating disorder. It's called "pro-ana" and includes such things as "thinspiration."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro-ana

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

#335

Post by _kst_ » Thu, Jun 11, 2015, 3:42 PM UTC

Veratyr wrote: post #188

_kst_ wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

> There's a movement of people who call themselves "Social Justice Warriors" (SJWs).

No, there isn't. "SJW" is an insult used by their opponents. (Some of them might choose to adopt it, but most as far as I know do not.)

> The definition of feminism has become sufficiently corrupted thanks to these people that women themselves are fighting against it.

I've seen that claim, but I'm extremely skeptical that it's a significant phenomenon.

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

#336

Post by brimanning » Thu, Jun 11, 2015, 4:10 PM UTC

arfliw wrote: post #289

brimanning wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to this, you can also be automatically shadowbanned by spam filters which, at times, can be quite aggressive. I was once shadowbanned for "getting caught up with a spammy IP address" according to a mod.

That happened to some guy and he kept using reddit as normal for three years until he found out. Took it pretty well. His history is painful to look at. Just talking to himself, nobody ever responds or upvotes him. Was in /r/TIFU recently, too lazy to get the link.

I saw that too. That's what made me check if I was shadowbanned. I'm not nearly as active as he was, but it made me realize I wasn't always just late to the discussion or something.

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

#337

Post by CPLX » Thu, Jun 11, 2015, 4:20 PM UTC

mattbessey wrote: post #333

mahranch wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Please stop spreading this nonsense. I expected better from HN. She may not have been removing anything, nor any of the other admins, but lnanek2 does bring up a strong point, albeit indirectly: She is hated by a majority of users on reddit. And she's hated because of her bogus lawsuit she now appears to be dragging out, and how her husband is in serious debt due to running a ponzi scheme. Her and her husband are n…

A majority of users? Please, Reddit has ~16M unique users per month. I really don't think 8M people hate Ellen Pao. Hell, I doubt more than 0.1M users know who she is. There's no denying this is the biggest (and frankly hilarious to watch unfold) shitstorm in Reddit's history, but it is a vocal minority. There were only 5k subscribers to /r/fatpeoplehate. It was a silly move to ban it, because its clearly pissed off…

Apparently there were over 150,000 actually.

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

#338

Post by forgottenpass » Thu, Jun 11, 2015, 4:30 PM UTC

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…

If I create a subreddit where I ban all posts start with A, is that censorship, or is that freedom for me to run and build my online space as I wish?

It's very much both. Where did you get the impression they're mutually exclusive? The "censorship" word is often only vocalized such when popular opinion objects to it, doesn't make it not censorship.

It's like how Bruce Schneier says that facebook's business model is surveillance. It's a descriptor advertisers and their platforms work hard not to be associated with, that doesn't make it not-surveillance.

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

#339

Post by finnn » Thu, Jun 11, 2015, 4:38 PM UTC

arfliw wrote: post #290

finnn wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minor correction: Posts of shadow banned users are visible, but only after a mod of that subreddit manually approves each one. Basically everything they post is flagged as spam.

That explains a lot. I have a few users whose submissions to my sub are always flagged as spam even though they are fine. They must be shadowbanned. Interestingly, one of them submits awful content. It's not spam but he is absolutely terrible. I wonder if they shadowban because the algo's figured out you suck.

You can check by trying to visit their user page. If it 404s, they're shadowbanned. The shadowbanning system is terrible. It's not transparent, it just randomly censors people, some of whom happen to be spam, does not notify the people involved and offers no recourse to those who have been shadowbanned. I was shadowbanned a few years ago, I spent about 3 months spamming different reddit contacts, then one day noticed I was unshadowbanned.

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

#340

Post by namlem » Thu, Jun 11, 2015, 4:41 PM UTC

eruditely wrote: post #144

zxcvcxz wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN isn't very good, but it's a little better than the current state of reddit, which is like a middle school without adults. At least people try to be intellectual on HN.

Hacker news is consistently superior to reddit. I think we're just being difficult.

I have to agree. It's not like shitty stuff doesn't get posted here all the time, but on average, HN is definitely better than reddit.