Reddit CEO Cracks Down on Abusive Content to Protect Users, Attract Advertisers • Hacker News Board

Re: Reddit CEO Cracks Down on Abusive Content to Protect Users, Attract Advertisers

#151

Post by Ralfp » Fri, Nov 17, 2017, 4:07 PM UTC

jackmott wrote: post #96

malvosenior wrote: post #8

I would love to see a statement from Reddit/Twitter... explicitly stating that they will remain politically neutral. There’s certainly content that should legally be taken down, there’s probably content that isn’t advertising friendly and could be taken down. It seems like these companies are being very slanted in their evaluation of the latter category. Basically right leaning = bad, left leaning = good. All I want…

Why should anyone remain politically neutral no matter what? What if the Nazi party came into power? Impartiality can impart political bias if the facts happen to lean one way or the other, as they will from time to time.

> What if the Nazi party came into power?

What people tend to forget is that all totalitarian systems that came to power, have their origins form reactive movements acting to ineffectiveness or oppressiveness of existing systems. NSDAP was formed in response to worsening national situation. Reds and Whites were formed in response to worsening national situation. Italian fascism was response to political turmoil in post-war Italy. Quite a few European countries romanced with authoritarian rule (or went borderline fascist) in inter-war period.

Let me turn this question around: what if anti-nazi party came into power, and then to assure that no nazi party would ever come into power, it would implement its own authoritarian system? After all a lot of those governments enjoyed popular support during their rise to power, with people willing to give up their freedoms for sake of perceived security.

Back in McCarthyism it was better "dead than red". What if "its good to throw the nazi off the copter" is just a sign of our societies marching to new era of scare?

Re: Reddit CEO Cracks Down on Abusive Content to Protect Users, Attract Advertisers

#152

Post by josefresco » Fri, Nov 17, 2017, 4:07 PM UTC

creaghpatr wrote: post #128

josefresco wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

r/politics is just a name - like the thousands of others on Reddit. The sub reddit is made up of and only exists because of the subscribers / mods wants/wishes. Just because it has a "generic" name, does not mean it needs to be "fair and balanced" /s

However unlike the thousands of others, /r/politics is a default sub, giving it a certain nod of credibility from Reddit the company.

Good point - down with default subs!

Re: Reddit CEO Cracks Down on Abusive Content to Protect Users, Attract Advertisers

#153

Post by vidarh » Fri, Nov 17, 2017, 4:09 PM UTC

zeth__ wrote: post #138

jackmott wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should anyone remain politically neutral no matter what? What if the Nazi party came into power? Impartiality can impart political bias if the facts happen to lean one way or the other, as they will from time to time.

The Nazi came to power largely because the communists would constantly fight them in the streets and "no-platform" them. You'd think someone would have read a history book. Downvoting does not change facts. The constant street battles between the Communists and Nazis helped the Nazi far more than the Communists.

While the KPD made many stupid mistakes, and frankly given their Stalinist policies at the time were not much better than the NSDAP in most respect, it was the power hungry right wing parties that entered into a coalition government with Hitler and voted for the Enabling Act.

Re: Reddit CEO Cracks Down on Abusive Content to Protect Users, Attract Advertisers

#154

Post by coldtea » Fri, Nov 17, 2017, 4:09 PM UTC

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #141

argv_empty wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The subs I've heard about banning were echo chambers dedicated to the idea that "this group of people I don't like ought to be [starved|exiled|thrown from helicopters|raped|enslaved]" and such things. If that makes you think the policy is "right leaning = bad, left leaning = good," that says some pretty nasty things about the modern right, doesn't it?

Ah, that's the crux: racism and misogyny are terrible enough that if you hate it, you must be correct. For me personally, the echo chamber on both sides is enough to keep me far away from both /r/politics and /r/The_Donald. For example, you cannot say anything positive about Trump on /r/politics. Nothing. There was a screenshot showing that there were 231 negative articles posted and zero positive articles. It's lite…

>And as long as we avoid the latter, the former isn't necessarily an indication that fascism is on the rise.

Especially since in most accounts, Trump is more alike with Obama than not. Obama send home hundreds of thousands of immigrants, both back a shameless war machine (in fact Trump was more reluctant about that and more isolationist until the republican establishment forced his hand -- and then press found him instantly, if temporarily, more "presidential"), both have advanced the interests of corporatists, etc. If you didn't have the Obamacare repeal (which I'd call bad) they'd be 99% alike in their results.

One had better table manners and is a better (still ho-hum and totally fake) actor (in the kind of low quality populist soft-PR video like "the President interviewed by Zach Galifianakis" and "Another day at the office", etc that presidents feels obliged to put out post Clinton who popularized that BS to show us how funny and/or everyday people they are) compared to the vulgar billionaire, but that's more or less it.

Re: Reddit CEO Cracks Down on Abusive Content to Protect Users, Attract Advertisers

#155

Post by cryptonector » Fri, Nov 17, 2017, 4:09 PM UTC

malvosenior wrote: post #8

I would love to see a statement from Reddit/Twitter... explicitly stating that they will remain politically neutral. There’s certainly content that should legally be taken down, there’s probably content that isn’t advertising friendly and could be taken down. It seems like these companies are being very slanted in their evaluation of the latter category. Basically right leaning = bad, left leaning = good. All I want…

Reddit is full of non-advertiser-friendly content. Not just the posts, but the comments. Banning all that content will make Reddit boring to many of its users.

As for content that breaks the law, there isn't much of that in the U.S., for obvious reasons. Elsewhere it's another story.

As to politics, I don't think you can expect any of these sites to be politically neutral. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit -- all show their bias. It's OK, it's part of life in a free market. There is a concern that many voices can be shut out of the market, and so maybe there will, at some point, be a decent rationale for temporary (say, ten years) regulations on digital town squares.

Re: Reddit CEO Cracks Down on Abusive Content to Protect Users, Attract Advertisers

#156

Post by H99189 » Fri, Nov 17, 2017, 4:10 PM UTC

zeth__ wrote: post #138

jackmott wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should anyone remain politically neutral no matter what? What if the Nazi party came into power? Impartiality can impart political bias if the facts happen to lean one way or the other, as they will from time to time.

The Nazi came to power largely because the communists would constantly fight them in the streets and "no-platform" them. You'd think someone would have read a history book. Downvoting does not change facts. The constant street battles between the Communists and Nazis helped the Nazi far more than the Communists.

Well said. I think the left in America today are closer to the true Nazi's than they realize. The campuses of today are churning out SJW's who are often racist (against white/europeans), fine with violence against their opponents and have quite simply been radicalized in some ways to hate the first and second amendment.

Re: Reddit CEO Cracks Down on Abusive Content to Protect Users, Attract Advertisers

#157

Post by maaaats » Fri, Nov 17, 2017, 4:10 PM UTC

alexanderstears wrote: post #107

tdb7893 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard because people will always be mad when their stuff gets taken down and it's hard to tell where the line is. A good example on reddit is that r/the_Donald is often very racist, islamophobic, and misogynistic (and it's not a small portion, often the top comment on a post will be something that is islamophobic) but they don't see themselves as that way. I don't think they should ban that sub but even being imp…

Can you define "Islamophobia"? It's a serious question, I don't disagree that there's some prejudice against Islam on the western right. However, a lot of the top posts are ultimately factual claims. Sweden has a rise in grenade attacks and sexual assaults, British police looked the other way when Muslim Men formed a pedophilia group, most terrorism is motivated by Islam, and there are Islamists whose purported goal…

Today, through browsing r/popular, I saw a post about a swedish woman having been raped by a refugee. The comments were neither factual or objective. Most actually claimed she deserved it, because she "probably voted for the left".

Be careful about who you try to defend here, just read any top comment. And dont confuse facts with what's really relevant. For instance, a few days ago I saw a discussion about this:

> a police officer is eighteen and a half times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be by a police officer

This is true, and tries to paint a picture of black males being violent (should've seen the comments). But it's two incomparable metrics! Actually, a police officer is ~165 times likelier to be killed by a white male given the same rules.

So yeah, "facts", but always distorted in these subreddits.

Re: Reddit CEO Cracks Down on Abusive Content to Protect Users, Attract Advertisers

#158

Post by dnate » Fri, Nov 17, 2017, 4:10 PM UTC

Cknight70 wrote: post #52

What I don't understand about this new trend of companies trying to make their content "Advertiser friendly" is that those same advertisers seem to be fine advertising during events like the Vegas Shooting. I'm just hoping this trend of making your websites rated G dies off sooner rather than later.

I don't see the connection between the shooting and advertisers. If you are American I understand that the Las Vegas shooting probably affected you very much. There is a lot of violence going on around the world, so what do you suggest?

Re: Reddit CEO Cracks Down on Abusive Content to Protect Users, Attract Advertisers

#159

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Nov 17, 2017, 4:10 PM UTC

josefresco wrote: post #15

Helmet wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about r/The_Donald violates the rules other than going against your political preferences? There are left-wing sub-reddits that openly call for armed revolution, violence against the "bourgeoisie" and the police, destruction of property, etc; but I'm sure they're OK to exist, right?

Ah yes, "whataboutism" - it's almost like we're on The_Donald right now!

[deleted]

Re: Reddit CEO Cracks Down on Abusive Content to Protect Users, Attract Advertisers

#160

Post by josefresco » Fri, Nov 17, 2017, 4:10 PM UTC

Pigo wrote: post #48

josefresco wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Politics wasn't always like that ... it's now a counter-balance to The_Donald. Hard to remain "neutral" when right next door there's not even an attempt.

t_d was a promotional subreddit for his campaign, it never claimed to be balanced. It bothers me because I would like to visit a subreddit that actually is balanced, and now there isn't one.

How would this work? I'm curious. Any subreddit created on the topic of "politics" is going to attract armies on each side, who will then use their collective "brigading" (sp) power to influence the sub? Maybe with a strong mod, who tries to balance submissions 50/50 - but then was is the point? If a republican, or democrat is doing something wrong/illegal/immoral - shouldn't we all know about it regardless of potential bias?