Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Former Reddit CEO says the site's about to be purged

engadget.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 141 posts

Re: Former Reddit CEO says the site's about to be purged

#111

Post by vectorpush »

acbart wrote: post #14
sharkweek wrote: post #8

Eh... it's their playground. While I don't like the idea of what's offensive being so subjective, there is A LOT of shit on Reddit that I would be happy to see gone. If Costco had a corner in every store where people were allowed to stand around yelling racist commentary all the time, and Costco laid out a policy to remove this from their stores, I think the majority of people would applaud this move, thus improving…

Well, people don't go to Costco for commentary, they go there to buy things. So a more apt comparison would be a section that sells things that certain groups may find offensive - e.g., sex toys, confederate flags, bibles, guns[1]. The metaphor holds mostly, Costco is free to do what it wants to cater to those people, but I don't think it's unreasonable for some groups to want to fight to hold on. It's hard to make b…

> So a more apt comparison would be a section that sells things that certain groups may find offensive - e.g., sex toys, confederate flags, bibles, guns[1]

Not a great analogy since the subreddits that are analogous to the examples you listed are all permitted on reddit without question. There are plenty of sex/flag/bible/gun related subs and nobody on either side of the reddit debate is trying to ban them. A better analogy would be if a group of patrons meeting up in one section of the store, proceeded to roam about the premises harassing overweight customers who are there to make purchases. Naturally, store management would seek to remove these individuals from the store so that the other customers can shop in peace.

Re: Former Reddit CEO says the site's about to be purged

#112

Post by johrn »

baddox wrote: post #110
johrn wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's not as troubling if it needs to be searched for. But it doesn't need to be searched for. It's everywhere on the defaults, that's the troubling part. You don't have to go to a specifically racist subreddit to see racism. You don't have to go to a specifically woman-hating subreddit to see misogyny. I'm saying that it is everywhere . Not "I could find some hatred in some submissions", but "I could find hatre…

This discussion is not about reddit announcing to more strictly moderate the default subbreddits. I think they would be wise to do that, and I would have very little problem with it (especially personally, since I don't subscribe to hardly any of the defaults).

The discussion here in this specific chain of comment started because I responded to this:

> I would like reddit to be a place for completely free, uncensored expression.

By saying:

> This is nice in theory, but it basically requires defending the rights of hate groups to silence those they hate.

Allowing the hate groups a home on reddit makes them feel comfortable. Deleting the hate group subreddits reduces their ability to silence others. It sends a message to both the haters and their targets that the hate is not welcome.

If it's a choice between censoring a bunch of evil bigots, and letting their uncensored speech censor the people they hate, I will pick censoring the bigots every time.

Re: Former Reddit CEO says the site's about to be purged

#113

Post by tzs »

austenallred wrote: post #18

I honestly wouldn't mind a "purge." I don't necessarily agree that drawing the line as to what is appropriate on a website is necessarily the destruction of people being able to express themselves. HackerNews doesn't allow racism, but I don't feel my right to express my opinion (for the most part - the hivemind that is caused by upvoting comments is troubling, but another issue altogether). If people want to be blata…

> HackerNews doesn't allow racism [...]

HN is the equivalent of a single sub-reddit. Readers see the titles of all submissions that make it to the top pages or to the RSS feed they are using. They also see the user name that submitted the story, and the site it is from.

This necessitates restrictions on content, because nearly everyone has some kind of content they do not want to read to the point that they will choose not to visit sites where they cannot avoid it. Without restrictions, it would be too much effort to pick out the things you are interested in from among the things that you find extremely distasteful or offensive that it just would not be worth the effort for most people.

Reddit has sub-reddits. As long as an offensive sub-reddit is not made a default sub-reddit, and you do not subscribe to it, and you aren't subscribed to sub-reddits (or external sources) that discuss whether or not Reddit should allow offensive sub-reddits, you will rarely or never see that offensive sub-reddit.

For example, I had no idea that /r/coontown existed until it was mentioned several times here on HN.

Reddit would be best off in the long run, I think, if they set the line at legality under the laws applicable in whatever state they are incorporated, along with a no doxing and no FPH-like material, combined with a logical split of Reddit into two sets of sub-reddits: Prime Time Reddit (PTR) and Uncensored Reddit (UR).

The two would share accounts, but only PTR shows up on your front page, and there would be a link to take you to a UR front page (or maybe an option to show UR top content after PTR content on a unified front page, with a separator between the two sections).

Both would require (1) legality, and (2) no doxing and FPH-like behavior. PTR would in addition require that sub-reddits (including their topic, their acceptable submissions, and their comments) be things that would be acceptable if they were part of a US nationwide prime time television show.

Advertisers would be able to specify whether their ads just go to PTR, just to UR, or both, and maybe there should also be separate Reddit Gold systems on the two.

Re: Former Reddit CEO says the site's about to be purged

#114

Post by fixermark »

baddox wrote: post #107
fixermark wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you still get the free end of the continuum if /r/coontown is gone.

The discussion is not over whether to ban only /r/coontown.

But the discussion is also not over whether to ban most, all, or even some subreddit's. It's over a fairly targeted removal, though reddit doesn't have a rubric for targeting in the future, which understandably makes some people nervous---people who like a nice, ordered, clear set of rails to ride on. But this is social, and that's not how social works. It still doesn't take much common sense to guess at what's in and what's out.

I mean, what we're basically seeing is this;

Yishan Wong, 2012: "We stand for free speech. This means we are not going to ban distasteful subreddits. We will not ban legal content even if we find it odious or if we personally condemn it."

spez, 2015: Wow, that REALLY didn't work. So we're not going to do THAT anymore. Tune in on Thursday and we'll talk about what we'll do instead.

Does this mean your favorite subreddits might get killed? Possibly. But probably not. And that's likely to be good enough for an awful lot of users. More importantly, "an Internet with a front page that doesn't have a CoonTown is a better internet" is a pretty easy assertion to buy.

Re: Former Reddit CEO says the site's about to be purged

#115

Post by rrss1122 »

sharkweek wrote: post #8

Eh... it's their playground. While I don't like the idea of what's offensive being so subjective, there is A LOT of shit on Reddit that I would be happy to see gone. If Costco had a corner in every store where people were allowed to stand around yelling racist commentary all the time, and Costco laid out a policy to remove this from their stores, I think the majority of people would applaud this move, thus improving…

I don't think the Costco analogy applies well in this situation.

I do think Reddit is going to miss most of these people. Personally, I say good riddance, to these people and to Reddit.

Re: Former Reddit CEO says the site's about to be purged

#116

Post by SwellJoe »

mreiland wrote: post #104
fixermark wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are those subreddits threatened by a ban on /r/fatpeoplehate? If not, there's very little to be concerned about.

Perhaps a bit extreme, but the underlying point is applicable here. First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

There is no talk of banning socialists, trade unionists, Jews, or any other thing that is not a subreddit or user devoted to hate. Further, no one is "coming for" redditors that spew hate...they're merely being shown the door.

The comparison of this quote, which is about people literally being thrown into jail for their beliefs, to racists being told they can't post hate speech on a privately owned website, is disingenuous, at best.

Re: Former Reddit CEO says the site's about to be purged

#117

Post by dang »

amyjess wrote: post #105
dang wrote: post #37

The rule of thumb for ongoing stories on HN is to have a new thread each time there's significant new information, and (hopefully) have it point to the most substantive source. Neither this story nor the article comes close to passing that test, so I'm burying this post as a dupe.

Fair enough--the article wasn't a great one, and I only chose this link because I felt awkward submitting an actual reddit comment. The main thing I thought was salient new information was Yishan revealing that the board wanted to ban the hate groups but Pao was the only one holding them back, which absolutely contradicts the earlier myth that Pao wanted to get rid of all the hate groups.

Is "revealing" the right word, though? "Alleging" seems more neutral. It didn't look to me like there was enough information to tell whether the claim is true or not.

(I don't personally know anything about this and am just following it from the outside like everyone else.)

Re: Former Reddit CEO says the site's about to be purged

#118

Post by [deleted] »

amyjess wrote: post #105
dang wrote: post #37

The rule of thumb for ongoing stories on HN is to have a new thread each time there's significant new information, and (hopefully) have it point to the most substantive source. Neither this story nor the article comes close to passing that test, so I'm burying this post as a dupe.

Fair enough--the article wasn't a great one, and I only chose this link because I felt awkward submitting an actual reddit comment. The main thing I thought was salient new information was Yishan revealing that the board wanted to ban the hate groups but Pao was the only one holding them back, which absolutely contradicts the earlier myth that Pao wanted to get rid of all the hate groups.

[deleted]

Re: Former Reddit CEO says the site's about to be purged

#119

Post by PensiveGoat »

rhema wrote: post #51

This whole fiasco is so strange. What kind of CEO claims a "moral authority" to do a purge and adds a trollface picture? Also, look at the subreddits that u/spez is moderator of. For example, his subreddit r/Cannibals has a top post: [ https://www.reddit.com/r/Cannibals/comments/3cxp5e/to_stop_w... ] where a highly scored post from 3 days ago reads, "To stop world hunger we must simply eat all the poor people." While…

> Also, look at the subreddits that u/spez is moderator of. For example, his subreddit r/Cannibals...

In the past your consent wasn't required to be made a moderator of a subreddit; that's probably how u/spez became a moderator of r/cannibals.

Re: Former Reddit CEO says the site's about to be purged

#120

Post by arprocter »

obituary_latte wrote: post #24
sharkweek wrote: post #8

Eh... it's their playground. While I don't like the idea of what's offensive being so subjective, there is A LOT of shit on Reddit that I would be happy to see gone. If Costco had a corner in every store where people were allowed to stand around yelling racist commentary all the time, and Costco laid out a policy to remove this from their stores, I think the majority of people would applaud this move, thus improving…

I was in the same boat in terms of stuff being gone -- most recently fatpeoplehate -- but really it was a result of it showing on the front page of the website (which is where I tend to land most often). Had it not appeared there, I wouldn't have known about it and it wouldn't have been a problem for me. Seems like there is some sort of middle-ground where questionable (though not illegal) content could still exist b…

I don't think it was the front page - I think it began to show up on /r/all due to the number of upvotes things got once the sub had a lot of subscribers
Post reply on HN