Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit • Hacker News Board

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#221

Post by asdff » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 6:13 PM UTC

sickygnar wrote: post #137

nromiun wrote: post #86

Reddit and 4Chan are the two sides of the same coin for me. Just their ideologies are different. At least the people on 4Chan are self aware about how toxic they are. But the mods (at least on the popular subreddits) on reddit love to ban anything that isn't far left. I don't mind echo chambers but the lack of self awareness always rubs me the wrong way.

4chan is unmoderated, reddit is heavily moderated. how on earth are they 2 sides of the same coin? nowadays, it seems like anything unmoderated starts going right. it used to be the opposite. mildly OT - the only thing they have in common is that they are infiltrated by bots which just serve to amplify the extreme discourse. there are some interesting bot-bait threads on 4chan where people communicate text via obfusc…

4chan has paid moderators and unpaid volunteer janitors keeping the beast in the state that its in, imagine what a wasteland that site would be in absence of any moderation.

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#222

Post by mst » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 6:13 PM UTC

throwanem wrote: post #199

chrisco255 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free speech isn't hard to understand as a concept. If someone says something you disagree with, you debate them. Echo chambers radicalize us all. No one is immune to the effects of groupthink.

So, how do you feel about the fire-in-a-crowded-theater exception?

Not sure what relevance an "exception" a judge made up to justify censoring protest against WW2 japanese internment camps has to this conversation.

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#223

Post by jcims » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 6:13 PM UTC

stronglikedan wrote: post #113

ralusek wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is responsible for the fact that 24% of people killed by police are black?

> 24% of people killed by police are black > African Americans, however, account for 24 percent of those fatally shot and killed by the police despite being just 13 percent of the U.S. population. As The Post noted in a new analysis published last week, that means black Americans are 2.5 times as likely as white Americans to be shot and killed by police officers. [0] [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-natio…

> black Americans are 2.5 times as likely as white Americans to be shot and killed by police officers.

Black Americans are also 4 times as likely (per capita) to kill a police officer.

https://ucr.fbi.gov/leoka/2018/topic-pages/officers-feloniou... (bottom of page)

The reality of course is that the relationship between law enforcement and the black community is dogshit. There are terrible people on both sides that escalate nonsense into homicide, and this puts both groups on high alert in tense encounters.

Unfortunately I feel that one side has to move first to fix the situation and to me that's obviously law enforcement. But even if they started, in earnest, today it's going to take decades to equalize and sins of the past will eternally haunt us all.

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#224

Post by SauciestGNU » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 6:14 PM UTC

nromiun wrote: post #176

augustt wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why even lie like this. r/unpopularopinion is basically conservative talking points 101 for instance. Do you seriously think posting "I don't think the means of production should be seized" will get you banned from r/pics? Come on.

So on a supposedly unbiased website the only place conservatives can hang out is at r/unpopularopinion? That doesn't sound wrong to you? And yes, even on non-political subreddits politics has taken root. Any time there is a political photo it turns into a full blown political subreddit.

>So on a supposedly unbiased website the only place conservatives can hang out is at r/unpopularopinion? That doesn't sound wrong to you?

Conservatives are a minority in America, so it makes sense their opinions would be unpopular by virtue of that.

There's nothing that's not political, every aspect of life is political, how we distribute resources, interact with our neighbors, basically everything is political and sidelining political discussion is itself a political act which benefits whoever is currently wielding power.

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#225

Post by CM30 » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 6:14 PM UTC

nromiun wrote: post #156

alecb wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you develop a worldview where the grotesquely status quo mainstream of Reddit is considered "far-left"?

Because I have seen multiple times that any political post or comment right of the far left getting banned? And reddit isn't connected to real life and "mainstream" in any way. In fact they can give Twitter a run for their money based on how disconnected from reality they are.

Yeah, this 100%. If you went by what Reddit and Twitter thought was going to happen in recent votes and elections, you'd think that Sanders would be the Democratic nominee in 2016, that Trump was not going to be president, that Britain would vote to remain in the EU and that Jeremy Corbyn would lead the Labour Party to victory over Boris Johnson and the Conservatives.

The fact that all those predictions turned out to be wrong indicates that at least a sizeable percentage of the population is further to the right politically than the majority of Reddit or Twitter seemingly is.

You may not always get banned for having the opposite opinion on topics like those (though it definitely happens in quite a few subreddits), but the point is, the prevailing consensus on those sites is certainly a lot further left than the mainstream as shown by election resultls.

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#226

Post by Avicebron » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 6:15 PM UTC

ilikehurdles wrote: post #189

pnako wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly do you mean by 'radicalization'? Do young males have opinions that are fundamentally different from their fathers or grandfathers?

The radical right capitalized on the whole gamergate scandal to push their agendas, and their fathers and grandfathers wouldn't have generally identified as gamers.

Gamergate in no way was totally responsible for the election of Trump. If anything invoking that Bannon capitalized on a small fraction of people in the movement is used as a cudgel by those wishing to shove their own political agenda down "gamer culture's" throat. Feeling excluded? Why not just destroy it instead. Pathetic.

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#227

Post by defen » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 6:15 PM UTC

throwanem wrote: post #199

chrisco255 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free speech isn't hard to understand as a concept. If someone says something you disagree with, you debate them. Echo chambers radicalize us all. No one is immune to the effects of groupthink.

So, how do you feel about the fire-in-a-crowded-theater exception?

You're allowed to shout that there's a fire in a crowded theater if there's actually a fire. No one has ever argued that there is an unlimited right to say whatever you want whenever you want (libel and slander laws exist and don't seem to be controversial). If you falsely shout that there's a fire and cause a stampede and people are injured and it can be proven that you did it with malicious intent, you will be prosecuted or sued, but this isn't fundamentally different than libel or slander laws. Finally, you should know that the "fire in a crowded theater" phrase came from a unanimous Supreme Court decision that endorsed censorship and suppression of speech that criticized conscription during World War 1.

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#228

Post by MrZongle2 » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 6:16 PM UTC

jamisteven wrote: post #154

"For my country.." LMAO is this guy serious? His net worth is how much? Him leaving does what exactly?

It signals he has determined that after this point in time, staying onboard becomes less profitable.

The "for my country" part is just dramatic posturing.

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#229

Post by sosodev » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 6:16 PM UTC

pnako wrote: post #180

ilikehurdles wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit, among other social media websites, has been used as an avenue for the radicalization of, particularly, young males.

What exactly do you mean by 'radicalization'? Do young males have opinions that are fundamentally different from their fathers or grandfathers?

I’m a young white man and I grew up in the Deep South (Alabama/Mississippi).

I had just started eighth grade when I moved to a very small town in Mississippi. On my first day a group of white kids invited me to sit with them. They decided the best way to break the ice would be to tell me heinous racist jokes. For example, somebody would tell a “joke” about how they’d like to hang Obama from their Christmas tree and everybody would burst into laughter.

All that is to say that I don’t think their opinions are different than those who raised them. They were children and had to have learned it from somebody.

But they would never express their racism outside of small white groups because they knew at some level it was wrong.

At some point in my teenage years I noticed a shift among these “friends”. They had joined online groups that echoed their sentiments and argued that it wasn’t wrong to be racist but rather it just makes you “woke” to go against the crowd. They think they’re just seeing the world differently.

One guy in particular would say heinous racist things and immediately follow it up with something like “I’d rather die than live under communism”. He had become radicalized. He was no longer a closeted racist boy. Now he’s a fully grown racist man filled with vitriol.

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#230

Post by catalogia » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 6:16 PM UTC

izzydata wrote: post #142

MarcellusDrum wrote: post #32

Reddit got too mainstream for its own good. The company desperately wants to become the new social media (think Facebook or Twitter), but many users are standing in the way, making the change from a discussion website to a social media website slow. What made me and many others use Reddit in the first place is that it didn't really matter who you are and what's your political and religious background, the only thing…

I don't like reddit because discussion is always influenced by what needs to be said in order to be more popular. If reddit got rid of usernames and karma then I think it would be ideal.

'Karma seeking behavior' is a problem even on wholly uncontroversial subreddits. Shit like "my girlfriend baked me a cake with [subject of the subreddit on it]" is really uninteresting content after you've seen it for the thousandth time but gets upvoted pretty reliably. Reddit's system simply isn't an effective moderation system if you want to establish a thoughtful community because cheap pandering to the crowd is easier than finding or creating thoughtful content.