Reddit Gearing Up to Ban or Quarantine the Alt Right Subreddit • Hacker News Board

Re: Reddit Gearing Up to Ban or Quarantine the Alt Right Subreddit

#91

Post by lovich » Wed, Nov 30, 2016, 5:40 PM UTC

jjawssd wrote: post #34

chrisrhoden wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is under no obligation to support, nurture, or pay for the resources required to keep this up. They are under no obligation to implicitly condone this content, as they have taken on an editorial role in the past and now anything they don't ban is in contrast to those things they have. As you pointed out, it's the web. There are many web hosts that will refuse you service for hosting pornography. That doesn't p…

Why isn't Spez able to arbitrarily delete subreddits? Why isn't Twitter starting mass deportations? I don't see any reason for them to wait. They can get started right away. It's easy to write a regex that identifies Trump supporters and eliminates their accounts quickly. Why haven't we started yet?

Automating a way to identify what people belong to what groups is possible, buts its definitely not as easy as a regex

Re: Reddit Gearing Up to Ban or Quarantine the Alt Right Subreddit

#92

Post by MK999 » Wed, Nov 30, 2016, 5:43 PM UTC

mordocai wrote: post #78

jjawssd wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with that? You aren't entitled to freedom of expression on any particular platform run by a private entity. Freedom of expression only applies to the government.

What if all the major places of discourse ban your speech? Isn't that basically the same as the government doing so? Sure, it doesn't violate the constitution but it still is a serious issue.

If you really start saying things they don't like you will lose your ability to get snail-mail (in Canada).

I can just hear it now... what's the big deal the Canada Post is under no obligation to do business with you.

Re: Reddit Gearing Up to Ban or Quarantine the Alt Right Subreddit

#93

Post by fatdog » Wed, Nov 30, 2016, 5:57 PM UTC

Left needed a new boogyman because the old ones were getting stale. "alt right" is a perfect candidate.

If you believe people who agree with some of the alt-rightist views must be held accountable for the standard racists who use that worldview as cover, then logically you must also make it incumbent upon people of muslim faith to tug a forelock to "us enlightened folk" in shared outrage and be accountable for the extremists who act in their name, and for random jewish people to be accountable for settlements, for catholics to feel they owe you something for their Irish "freedom fighters," etc.

Re: Reddit Gearing Up to Ban or Quarantine the Alt Right Subreddit

#94

Post by Dylan16807 » Wed, Nov 30, 2016, 6:10 PM UTC

jjawssd wrote: post #57

laurent123456 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really a free speech issue to be honest. As far as I can tell some of these sub-reddits, like the_donald in particular, are well organised and know how to push their posts to the front page (the rare time I open /r/all, their posts are almost always among the top ones, despite being very low quality content). So it's no about censoring free speech, it's about making the idiot shouting his opinions with a meg…

Spez has already weighted that subreddit so it rarely shows up on the front page. Why hasn't he outright deleted the subreddit?

Weighted? No, they changed it against single subreddits dominating in general.

Re: Reddit Gearing Up to Ban or Quarantine the Alt Right Subreddit

#95

Post by joesmo » Wed, Nov 30, 2016, 6:29 PM UTC

rkangel wrote: post #64

vectorpush wrote: post #29

Who cares? Reddit is a private company, they can set their own standards for moderation. For several years now I've seen this non-stop obsession with lambasting reddit as a shit-hole and a left-wing echo-chamber and a shit company run by amateurs and SJWs. Who cares? The overwhelming majority of redditors subsist on photos of animals and drawings of video game characters. Just leave if reddit isn't friendly to your p…

Reddit has traditionally been a place where free speech is prized above all else. That they might 'censor' the alt right is symbolic. What it is symbolic of is in question though, pick one of: 1) The alt right has become so hateful that regardless of your approach to free speech that allowing it to propagate is unacceptable 2) Societies view of free speech has changed in the face of things like the alt right. 3) The…

You're thinking of 4chan. Reddit has never been that--it's been moderated for many years.

Re: Reddit Gearing Up to Ban or Quarantine the Alt Right Subreddit

#96

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Nov 30, 2016, 6:31 PM UTC

kreneskyp wrote: post #72

Shanea93 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! Lets silence the opinions of everyone we disagree with! Lets take away their places to talk so they have to skulk in the shadows! Lets pretend there's no merit to listening to the thoughts of millions of people! Why stop with removing their access to Reddit? Why not make it downright illegal to talk about it? Why don't we make it illegal to think about it, too? I'm exceptionally left-leaning and I don't agree wi…

I don't think you're familiar with /r/the_Donald's rules. The number one rule is no dissenting. Not even polite discussion is allowed. They've already entombed themselves.

[deleted]

Re: Reddit Gearing Up to Ban or Quarantine the Alt Right Subreddit

#97

Post by joesmo » Wed, Nov 30, 2016, 6:34 PM UTC

jjawssd wrote: post #14

pavel_lishin wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be perfectly happy if these "free speech lovers" were to decamp en masse for Voat.

Just because you disagree with their opinion does not mean you should want to kick them out. They are not acting upon their views in any way that affects you. Totally free expression is crucial and in no way will it affect you physically. I disagree with almost everything they stand for, but their presence is crucial for an open discussion of issues in our global societies.

How can you have an intelligent discussion without a lot of racism and hate thrown in? It's impossible.

Re: Reddit Gearing Up to Ban or Quarantine the Alt Right Subreddit

#98

Post by vectorpush » Wed, Nov 30, 2016, 6:34 PM UTC

basch wrote: post #61

vectorpush wrote: post #29

Who cares? Reddit is a private company, they can set their own standards for moderation. For several years now I've seen this non-stop obsession with lambasting reddit as a shit-hole and a left-wing echo-chamber and a shit company run by amateurs and SJWs. Who cares? The overwhelming majority of redditors subsist on photos of animals and drawings of video game characters. Just leave if reddit isn't friendly to your p…

Reddit was founded upon values of free speech, at least that is what people were told at the time, even if it wasnt true in the back rooms. I think the biggest concern is when platforms start to police illegal speech, and countries make political dissent illegal.

Personally, I've always viewed reddit's approach to moderation as non-interventionist and not as something that necessarily enshrined the ideals of free-speech. That is to say, it all seemed more of a growth-hack than anything else; outsource moderation to individual communities and set a policy of non-intervention so that when people complain to the admins they can say something like "subreddits are owned and operated by users, don't complain to us", this formula scaled very nicely and reddit exploded into the behemoth it is today.

But now that reddit has become something of a cultural focal point on the internet, it's started to draw attention from the media at large and suddenly the operators felt a little embarrassed that they had to defend subreddits such as /r/fatpeoplehate, /r/jailbat, /r/niggers etc. So I imagine they just said "fuck it, it's more trouble than it's worth", and despite a month or two of banhammer-whack-a-mole with fuck-stupid-dictator-sjw-cunt-ellen-mao subreddits, the site continued to flourish, and all the free-speech purists finally woke up to the startling truth that reddit.com was really just an internet startup and not a platform to empower the oppressed masses...

Until they banned another subreddit.

Re: Reddit Gearing Up to Ban or Quarantine the Alt Right Subreddit

#99

Post by Bartweiss » Wed, Nov 30, 2016, 6:38 PM UTC

joesmo wrote: post #95

rkangel wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit has traditionally been a place where free speech is prized above all else. That they might 'censor' the alt right is symbolic. What it is symbolic of is in question though, pick one of: 1) The alt right has become so hateful that regardless of your approach to free speech that allowing it to propagate is unacceptable 2) Societies view of free speech has changed in the face of things like the alt right. 3) The…

You're thinking of 4chan. Reddit has never been that--it's been moderated for many years.

It's always been complicated, though. Alexis Ohanion has repeatedly talked about the importance of Reddit as a censorship-free platform and talked up the company as embodying unfettered free speech.

Obviously that's not true, but major figures at the company have said it from the early days up through very recently. And the difference between moderation (in the "no spam, no personal threats, communities enforce their own rules" sense) and administrative speech restrictions is a big and challenging one.

So no, Reddit has never quite been that, but it's been one of their selling points regardless.

Re: Reddit Gearing Up to Ban or Quarantine the Alt Right Subreddit

#100

Post by Bartweiss » Wed, Nov 30, 2016, 6:40 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #80

Alex3917 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There actually are lots of safe harbor protections for common carriers. Lack of editorial oversight is why sites like YouTube can qualify for these protections, but sites like Gawker wouldn't be able to. (Even though they ultimately got shut down for ignoring a court order or whatever.)

YouTube still takes down videos, comments, channels, etc., and restricts others by age/country/etc.

Sure, but that's within safe harbor rules. If they went and moderated content and comments in a non-reactive way, say by banning commenters whose opinions they found incorrect, that would be legal but could jeopardize their safe harbor status.