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Reddit purges 1/2 of The Donald’s moderators – replaces them with approved mods

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Re: Reddit purges 1/2 of The Donald’s moderators – replaces them with approved mods

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that you believe you can interpret the motives of others (it was just a prank!) But you object to other people's interpretations. And what a coincidence, your interpretations align with your prior beliefs. Regardless, I think the facts are clear - reddit administrators altered the communication of users such that they appeared to be insulting the moderators of their subreddit. You think it was a "pra…

> It's interesting that you believe you can interpret the motives of others (it was just a prank!) But you object to other people's interpretations. And what a coincidence, your interpretations align with your prior beliefs. It's interesting that you're still lying about the subject, and calling it my interpretation instead of acknowledging the fact that it's the admin's own professed motives, not ones I am inventing…

You are both hostile and disingenuous. I haven't lied about anything. I have correctly stated that the reddit admin altered reddit user's messages to make it look like they were insulting moderators. Is that a lie?

I wrote that you interpreted that as a prank. Is that a lie? You've chosen to believe the reddit admin who altered the messages. That's how you have chosen to interpret the events.

There are other interpretations of these events. For example, you might suspect that the kind of person who would alter the communications of others to falsely attribute malicious statements to them may not tell the truth once he had been caught doing so. You might think that any professional, let alone the CEO, would realize tampering with your user's data to misrepresent them likely would not be construed as a harmless prank.

This will be my final message to you. You are needlessly hostile. You falsely accuse me of lying. You defend altering the data of users to misrepresent them as a "prank". I don't really think you've presented an argument here, other than to blindly trust the word of a person caught in the act of being dishonest and to pretend as if that is the only valid interpretation of events.

Re: Reddit purges 1/2 of The Donald’s moderators – replaces them with approved mods

#272
post #221
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> can be leveled at a lot of different websites, video games, and political parties. Everyone - every signle website, author, pundit, politician, etc who finds themselves mentioned favourably in a mass shooter manifesto should at least ask themselves how they got there and what has gone wrong with their messaging. There may not be anything they can do, but a lot of places seem to think that hate never leads to action…

Nope they shouldn't. Nobody owes anything to anybody because some random wacko liked something they once said or did. And even if you think they should, it's neither yours nor Reddit's business to enforce it.

So if person X spends years writing about how Jews are an evil conspiracy that run the world, and then someone shoots up a synagogue leaving a manifesto saying "finally I'm going to do something" and citing X, those are totally unrelated?

Re: Reddit purges 1/2 of The Donald’s moderators – replaces them with approved mods

#273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[citation needed]

Citation right here: >Prior to the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, The_Donald hosted a stickied post encouraging members to attend the rally and march alongside neo-Nazi and “ethnostate” groups, because, “In this case, the pursuit of preserving without shame white culture, our goals happen to align.” [0] [0] https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/11/13/16624688/reddit-bans-...

No, I need the citation of the source, not Vox's opinion.

Re: Reddit purges 1/2 of The Donald’s moderators – replaces them with approved mods

#274
post #272
post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope they shouldn't. Nobody owes anything to anybody because some random wacko liked something they once said or did. And even if you think they should, it's neither yours nor Reddit's business to enforce it.

So if person X spends years writing about how Jews are an evil conspiracy that run the world, and then someone shoots up a synagogue leaving a manifesto saying "finally I'm going to do something" and citing X, those are totally unrelated ?

A motivated investigator can always find extremists to discredit a large group. For example, among Bernie supporters, recently, talking about "an evil conspiracy that runs the world":

> if they try to do that [nominate someone other than Bernie at a brokered convention], forget the "political" part of the "political revolution" [1]

with thousands of upvotes and no moderator or admin action.

And some of the top comments on that post:

> If they do that it's time to revolt.

> This is a peaceful revolution. If they fight against it, they risk violence.

> Okay fine, a socialist revolution it is.

> Yeah the convention is a canary. If the canary dies we riot.

There's enough evidence of unmoderated site rules violations on that one post to shut down that sub if reddit wanted to.

But reddit doesn't want to, they're trying to tip the scales by censoring half of America.

1: https://www.reddit.com/r/WayOfTheBern/comments/f7ap56/plouff...

Re: Reddit purges 1/2 of The Donald’s moderators – replaces them with approved mods

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asking yourself why you were mentioned is not at all the same thing as taking responsibility. If a mass shooter mentioned how much they appreciated me, my work, or a group I ran (or was even in) I'd be concerned and would wonder why. That seems like a perfectly healthy response.

Actually that's the opposite of a healthy response. There's no reason to investigate why someone likes something unless it played an active role in the thing that is being investigated. Asking yourself why Joe Dirt liked listening to your podcast about cats and listed it on his BAD THING manifesto is truly at the polar opposite end of what normal people would do. They would definitely not feel concerned that he liste…

> Actually that's the opposite of a healthy response. There's no reason to investigate why someone likes something unless it played an active role in the thing that is being investigated. Asking yourself why Joe Dirt liked listening to your podcast about cats and listed it on his BAD THING manifesto is truly at the polar opposite end of what normal people would do. They would definitely not feel concerned that he listed them as an inspiration.

lmao

Re: Reddit purges 1/2 of The Donald’s moderators – replaces them with approved mods

#276
post #202
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The users of that forum have literally been linked to public shootings. I dislike that subreddit as much as anyone, but that’s guilt by peaceful association and can be leveled at a lot of different websites, video games, and political parties. Let’s not go there.

> can be leveled at a lot of different websites, video games, and political parties. Everyone - every signle website, author, pundit, politician, etc who finds themselves mentioned favourably in a mass shooter manifesto should at least ask themselves how they got there and what has gone wrong with their messaging. There may not be anything they can do, but a lot of places seem to think that hate never leads to action…

Didn't the Christchurch shooter also mention people like Nelson Mandela and MLK? Does this mean that their teachings are irrevocably tainted now?

For that matter, look at the 2017 Congressional baseball shooting - should Pelosi resign over the impact her words had? (Along with the rest of the DNC's leadership?)

Point being, mentally ill people do weird shit for illogical reasons. That doesn't make it the fault of whatever they used to justify their actions.

Re: Reddit purges 1/2 of The Donald’s moderators – replaces them with approved mods

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just googled it and it seems like he changed messages that were insulting him to insult moderators of the subreddit. The parent's comment doesn't seem wrong to me, if that's true. He altered communications of reddit users to make it look like they were insulting reddit moderators, in such a way as to falsely attribute those insults to the original authors.

You're still spinning it unfairly, by leaving out relevant information. It was a pranking attempt that fell flat, and was neither intended to nor successful in having the effect of surreptitiously turning T_D users against each other. The admin in question quickly admitted to the deed and explained his motives. Attributing other, conflicting motives without further justification is misleading at best.

Imagine Mark Zuckerberg using FB admin rights to turn a "Donald Trump is the worst president of our generation" post by Biden into "Bernie Sanders would be the worst president of our generation".

Would characterizing that as "an attempt to turn democrats against each other" be fair?

Re: Reddit purges 1/2 of The Donald’s moderators – replaces them with approved mods

#278
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> can be leveled at a lot of different websites, video games, and political parties. Everyone - every signle website, author, pundit, politician, etc who finds themselves mentioned favourably in a mass shooter manifesto should at least ask themselves how they got there and what has gone wrong with their messaging. There may not be anything they can do, but a lot of places seem to think that hate never leads to action…

Didn't the Christchurch shooter also mention people like Nelson Mandela and MLK? Does this mean that their teachings are irrevocably tainted now? For that matter, look at the 2017 Congressional baseball shooting - should Pelosi resign over the impact her words had? (Along with the rest of the DNC's leadership?) Point being, mentally ill people do weird shit for illogical reasons. That doesn't make it the fault of wha…

Nelson Mandela did spend thirty years in prison for terrorism and was vindicated only in hindsight. This comes back to the terrorist vs. freedom fighter conversation; looking at the rightness of the cause, the appropriateness and necessity of the methods, the power relations context, the violence carried out by the other side, and then still being very reluctant to support the use of violence to achieve a political goal.

(What was the essential difference between, say, the occupation of the Malheur wildlife refuge in 2016 by armed extremists and the occupation of the Dublin GPO in 1916 by armed extremists? Which could be considered mentally ill and why?)

(I also find it interesting that the most basic, minimal kind of critique - asking what the effect of the work is on the audience - has generated such outrage. I haven't called for censorship, I haven't even called for self-censorship, not directly attributed moral responsibility. All I said was should think about whether there was moral responsibility or not.)

Re: Reddit purges 1/2 of The Donald’s moderators – replaces them with approved mods

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation right here: >Prior to the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, The_Donald hosted a stickied post encouraging members to attend the rally and march alongside neo-Nazi and “ethnostate” groups, because, “In this case, the pursuit of preserving without shame white culture, our goals happen to align.” [0] [0] https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/11/13/16624688/reddit-bans-...

No, I need the citation of the source, not Vox's opinion.

http://web.archive.org/web/20170806002037/https://www.reddit...

Re: Reddit purges 1/2 of The Donald’s moderators – replaces them with approved mods

#280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny how pro-capitalistic people get here when this comes up. Everyone here is big government, anti-censorship, pro-speech, pro-decentralization, anti-corporation UNTIL conservatives are targeted. As a conservative (libertarian) yes, legally speaking they can do whatever they want, but morally speaking, it's fucked up. Ironic the quote below now applies to the opposite side. ---- First they came for the Sociali…

I see nothing wrong with it according to my morals. Maybe you could expand on what moral system would force people to interact with trolls. And I’m surprised to hear from a self-avowed libertarian that doesn’t seem to have heard of the concept of freedom of association. The “they” in that poem refers to the Nazi government. Reddit is not a government. It is people having discussions on a website run by a company. Eve…

> I see nothing wrong with it according to my morals.

Then you're blinded by bias.

> Maybe you could expand on what moral system would force people to interact with trolls.

The members overall aren't trolls and trolling isn't concentrated just in the T_D. Stopping all trolling is impossible and T_D mods did not encourage it in anyway. I have yet to see proof in this thread or the Reddit announcements.

> libertarian that doesn’t seem to have heard of the concept of freedom of association

I wouldn't mention freedom of association because it's heavily tied into freedom of speech in the US judicial system (NAACP v. Alabama). It rules that freedom of association is an essential part of freedom of speech because, in many cases, people can engage in effective speech only when they join with others.

> Reddit is not a government.

Well this contradicts your previous point above, but sure let's take this path. Yes, Reddit can do whatever they want, I noted that above saying it's legal. That does not mean if makes it right. If the government couldn't do it because it violates the Constitution then it's wrong in my eyes for a company to do it, even if they can legally.

> Everyone has a choice of whether or not to use it; not so with the Nazi regime.

No they don't, because they are being kicked out and the rules have been changing specifically for them.

> Have you never had to throw unruly people out of a house party?

Have you ever thrown a small get together and everyone in the block called the cops because they just hate you and want to see your fun shut down? That's more what it's like it my eyes.

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