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Reddit's user uprising against China because Tencent will invest in the platform

china-underground.com

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Re: Reddit's user uprising against China because Tencent will invest in the platform

#221

Post by Novashi »

save_ferris wrote: post #218
Novashi wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but the injustice Let's chill out with the over-the-top rhetoric because few of us are paying customers of reddit and it's their database at the end of the day. Stop manufacturing outrage please

When you run a large platform like Reddit, millions of users are trusting you with some basic and fundamental extensions of speech. Huffman violating that trust by editing another's speech crosses a major line. As others have pointed out, people have gone to jail for what they write on social media and forums. If the universal expectation that a user's posted words are theirs and theirs alone breaks down, as Huffman…

>When you run a large platform like Reddit, millions of users are trusting you with some basic and fundamental extensions of speech.

Except that they let The_Donald and other rigid subreddits constantly ban people with opinions contrary to their group-think. Where is the speech protection there?

Let's also not forget spez and other moderators routinely get death threats. If you're going to be an asshole by saying "fuck spez" or throwing out a death threat, I'm pretty sure you give up whatever "basic and fundamental extension of speech" you think reddit guarantees you.

Re: Reddit's user uprising against China because Tencent will invest in the platform

#222

Post by luckylion »

jmknoll wrote: post #37
luckylion wrote: post #2

Reddit already does some of the most aggressive tracking for surveillance, censors content they don't like, uses shadow bans, is run in an authoritarian way and has a score system that shows how good of a user you are - and reddit users are afraid of China because ...?

Because one is a website about cats, and one is an authoritarian nation... I’m relatively certain that the reddit admins are not going to jail me as a pawn in a political game, or as a punishment for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nor will they ban me from traveling by plane as a punishment for having low karma.

Reddit admins will indeed not sentence you to 20 years in a labor camp for disagreeing with them politically. But that's because they can't, not because they wouldn't.

Reddit would fit perfectly well into the Chinese internet. Just tweak the "permissible opinions" a bit and off you go, the rest can remain unchanged.

Re: Reddit's user uprising against China because Tencent will invest in the platform

#223

Post by gottam »

devmunchies wrote: post #120
sergiotapia wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> consider that they've become a massive safe harbor for the alt-right. I would say 95% of the website is firmly liberal. Try saying anything conservative anywhere on the platform and you'll be either: - Banned - Downvoted - Shadowbanned

Seriously. I’ve read some pretty extreme right wing views around the internet and NONE of them can be found on reddit (e.g. Charles Lindbergh’s views on ecofascism) (I’m a conservationist). It’s not a right wing haven. They’ve allowed a sub for the sitting president, but censored everything else that isn’t really tame.

anything right of the center is now considered extreme right wing views

Re: Reddit's user uprising against China because Tencent will invest in the platform

#224

Post by luckylion »

scoot_718 wrote: post #7
luckylion wrote: post #2

Reddit already does some of the most aggressive tracking for surveillance, censors content they don't like, uses shadow bans, is run in an authoritarian way and has a score system that shows how good of a user you are - and reddit users are afraid of China because ...?

Because your false equivalency is complete bullshit

But I'm not even calling anything equal. I'm merely pointing out that reddit is an authoritarian regime's wet dream already, and the users seem to be quite happy with it.

Hey, they could even get Chairman Pao back.

Re: Reddit's user uprising against China because Tencent will invest in the platform

#225

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway54323 wrote: post #212
skilled wrote: post #8

I smiled on the inside when I noticed this -- people posting all kinds of content exposing China -- earlier in my r/all feed. Great effort by the community.

I initially did as well. Until I started reading all the highly upvoted racist comments about Chinese people. (Yes, not comments about how bad the government is, rather racist comments about Chinese people.)

[deleted]

Re: Reddit's user uprising against China because Tencent will invest in the platform

#226

Post by mzybert »

skilled wrote: post #11
rayhendricks wrote: post #5

Deleted my reddit account. They can take their $150 million, but freedom of speech and more specifically being able to criticize the state is more important than your daily dose of catpics.

Hah! Maybe this is how I should look at my account being suspended for no reason a little less than two weeks ago. The email associated with this 6-year-old account does not exist on Gmail but cannot be registered again either. Such a bummer since I had good karma and a fairly organized feed. After explaining this to the admins -- I was still denied access back to my account. Actually, it's starting to grind my gears…

FYI: You don't need an email address to create a Reddit account. They made it look like you do, but you can just press 'Next' in the modal.

Re: Reddit's user uprising against China because Tencent will invest in the platform

#227

Post by zhengyi13 »

krapp wrote: post #161
intopieces wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That moderators can edit posts on Reddit throws into question the validity of state actors using it as evidence to arrest people but doesn't make it any more dangerous than it was from the start.

I would assume state actors would need something more than a screenshot of a Reddit post to make a case either way.

Keep in mind that now two states have proposed laws that would require inspection of the social media accounts of any potential gun purchaser.

There's zero specification in either law around oversight into or appeal of any decision to disallow a gun purchase on the basis of what the reviewer finds.

Re: Reddit's user uprising against China because Tencent will invest in the platform

#228

Post by intopieces »

save_ferris wrote: post #218
Novashi wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but the injustice Let's chill out with the over-the-top rhetoric because few of us are paying customers of reddit and it's their database at the end of the day. Stop manufacturing outrage please

When you run a large platform like Reddit, millions of users are trusting you with some basic and fundamental extensions of speech. Huffman violating that trust by editing another's speech crosses a major line. As others have pointed out, people have gone to jail for what they write on social media and forums. If the universal expectation that a user's posted words are theirs and theirs alone breaks down, as Huffman…

>If the universal expectation that a user's posted words are theirs and theirs alone breaks down, as Huffman showed us can be done, then platforms like Reddit can become much more dangerous.

Reddit is more dangerous when the universal expectation is that a user's posted words are theirs and theirs alone because Huffman showed that is not necessarily the case. People believing things because they are on Reddit -- which is, again, routinely manipulated by corporations and state actors -- is a problem.

Besides, the core controversy wasn't that the CEO changed a person's post. He could do that to 99.9% of posts and it wouldn't have made a difference. It was that he changed the post after it was a top-rated comment, meaning it had be 'validated' by the crowd. A crowd that has not been vetted to be legitimate in any sense. It could have been upvoted 20k times by bots, by shills, by real people agreeing with the comment... and most likely by a mix of all these.

The point is: hand-wringing about this form of manipulation, to one post for one hour, is really missing the forest for the trees. Reddit is minefield of trust in systems with no transparency whatsoever. It shouldn't be trusted at all, and it certainly shouldn't be expected to live up to the standard of a "free speech platform."

Re: Reddit's user uprising against China because Tencent will invest in the platform

#229

Post by adriveatrain »

intopieces wrote: post #114
jumbopapa wrote: post #9

Reddit has long been plagued with censorship. The CEO edited the post of a user because they criticized him or something. I can't believe how quickly that's been forgotten. The Reddit situation reminds me of the post about failing to build a billion dollar company a few days ago. Reddit is trying to make VCs happy and continue to grow the business, but a platform like Reddit is best as a less reliant on growth, but s…

>The CEO edited the post of a user because they criticized him or something. I can't believe how quickly that's been forgotten. The CEO changed a single post from "fuck " to "fuck " for an hour. While certainly this action was not received well, the drama it caused is way overblown and isn't evidence of being 'plagued with censorship.' If anything it's plagued with shills from governments and corporations.

Do you know why f spez was happening at the time?

and on the drama end of things

> former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao weighed in on the thread with her own criticisms of the current CEO. "I would have immediately fired anyone who did [what Huffman did]," Pao wrote.

Re: Reddit's user uprising against China because Tencent will invest in the platform

#230

Post by tootie »

intopieces wrote: post #114
jumbopapa wrote: post #9

Reddit has long been plagued with censorship. The CEO edited the post of a user because they criticized him or something. I can't believe how quickly that's been forgotten. The Reddit situation reminds me of the post about failing to build a billion dollar company a few days ago. Reddit is trying to make VCs happy and continue to grow the business, but a platform like Reddit is best as a less reliant on growth, but s…

>The CEO edited the post of a user because they criticized him or something. I can't believe how quickly that's been forgotten. The CEO changed a single post from "fuck " to "fuck " for an hour. While certainly this action was not received well, the drama it caused is way overblown and isn't evidence of being 'plagued with censorship.' If anything it's plagued with shills from governments and corporations.

It was an attempt at trolling by someone who should not have been trolling.
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