Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reddit reports 18% reduction in hate content after banning nearly 7k subreddits

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 173 posts

Re: Reddit reports 18% reduction in hate content after banning nearly 7k subreddits

#91

Post by thunkpad »

rvz wrote: post #23
chrisco255 wrote: post #4

Since there's no objective definition of "hate content", this is akin to them patting themselves on the back for outright censorship based on their own arbitrary definitions.

Well I guess they will find ways of expanding the definition of including turning innocent gestures, images, emojis, etc into 'dog whistling' signals which is only picked up by the hysterical extremes on both sides. Again, how does one draw the line on 'hate speech' or 'hate content'?

I think much like cybersecurity there is no "solution". Moderation is a posture, not a result. You have to just stay on top of it or everything will tend towards 4chan given the chance.

Re: Reddit reports 18% reduction in hate content after banning nearly 7k subreddits

#92

Post by recursivedoubts »

antiterra wrote: post #68
chromedev wrote: post #19

Anyone remember them saying in their ToS that hate speech is okay as long as it isn't against a group considered to be the minority?

To be fair to their intentions, the the cultural meaning is different based on social context. This is why successfully policing content on a global or even national social media site is nigh impossible. When a woman is recounting frustration at being talked over during a meeting and says "kill all men," there's a non-literal connotation based in a belief in patriarchal suppression. When a man says "kill all women" i…

For those of you who don't think in who/whom, note this comment well.

There are many, many people who think this way.

Re: Reddit reports 18% reduction in hate content after banning nearly 7k subreddits

#93

Post by eggsnbacon1 »

chromedev wrote: post #19

Anyone remember them saying in their ToS that hate speech is okay as long as it isn't against a group considered to be the minority?

Its clearly what they do. The best example, a default sub TwoXChromosomes is full of blatant hate speech against half the species and its touted as a progressive bastion when its a different variation of The Donald.

Re: Reddit reports 18% reduction in hate content after banning nearly 7k subreddits

#94

Post by nailer »

convery wrote: post #74
zalkota wrote: post #2

The other 82% is /r/politics

They'd never remove that though. Come to think of it, a lot of the banned subreddits were anti a lot of the politics that regularly get upvoted to the frontpage [0]. So looks more like a political purge. A selection of banned subreddits: r/CampusConservative r/HateCrimeHoaxes r/rightwingcomics r/rightwinglgbt r/Nationalism r/DebateAltRight r/GenderCritical r/blackcrimestatistics r/againstdiversity r/Holodomor r/Expos…

Thanks for actually providing details on what was banned. A lot of those are fairly reasonable topics. The 'Watch reddit die' sub recently posted screenshots of gay subreddits banning conservative gays explicitly because they were conservative.

Re: Reddit reports 18% reduction in hate content after banning nearly 7k subreddits

#95

Post by mcphage »

chrisco255 wrote: post #4

Since there's no objective definition of "hate content", this is akin to them patting themselves on the back for outright censorship based on their own arbitrary definitions.

> Since there's no objective definition of "hate content", this is akin to them patting themselves on the back for outright censorship based on their own arbitrary definitions.

There's no objective definition of "tall", and yet it's still a useful adjective.

Re: Reddit reports 18% reduction in hate content after banning nearly 7k subreddits

#96

Post by meowface »

recursivedoubts wrote: post #92
antiterra wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair to their intentions, the the cultural meaning is different based on social context. This is why successfully policing content on a global or even national social media site is nigh impossible. When a woman is recounting frustration at being talked over during a meeting and says "kill all men," there's a non-literal connotation based in a belief in patriarchal suppression. When a man says "kill all women" i…

For those of you who don't think in who/whom, note this comment well. There are many, many people who think this way.

>For those of you who don't think in who/whom

What do you mean by this?

Re: Reddit reports 18% reduction in hate content after banning nearly 7k subreddits

#97

Post by mundo »

gruez wrote: post #8

>The company also says that half (48 percent) of all hateful content on the site was targeting a person’s ethnicity or nationality. That was followed by their class or political affiliation (16 percent), [...] "Hate speech" now includes your political affiliation? That's news to me. I thought it's usually restricted to immutable characteristics about a person (race, religion, gender, etc.).

> "Hate speech" now includes your political affiliation? That's news to me.

"Hate speech" is a legal concept that has to do with protecting human rights; Reddit's "hateful content" is just the rules they put in place to try to make their website less shitty. There's no reason to expect them to be identical or even closely related to each other, is there?

Re: Reddit reports 18% reduction in hate content after banning nearly 7k subreddits

#98

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

james-mcelwain wrote: post #71
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The accusation is in the other direction, that some people aren't being censored despite saying equally obnoxious things. I've seen quite a few popular and non-censored Reddit comments talking about "Rethuglicans", or explaining that huge swaths of the population are irredeemably evil.

Do you have any evidence any sub was banned for the opposite equivalent of "Democraps" or whatever? This feels like a strawman without evidence that people were banned selectively.

I was taking it on faith that the comment I was responding to was correct and people are banned for just saying "leftist cucks". If that's not true then that changes things.

Re: Reddit reports 18% reduction in hate content after banning nearly 7k subreddits

#99

Post by ip26 »

throw_m239339 wrote: post #76
ip26 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Race & religion are sometimes deeply entwined, see Jewish. Imagine if Jewish ethnicity was a protected class but Jewish religion was not. How would that even work in practice? "I was not discriminating against the Jews on account of being ethnic Jews but rather on account of their Jewish faith, your Honor!"

Is there any other example of a "religion" that is both a religion and an ethnicity?

Mennonite (Amish)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnoreligious_group

Re: Reddit reports 18% reduction in hate content after banning nearly 7k subreddits

#100

Post by rsynnott »

salmon30salmon wrote: post #20

More accurately would be to say Reddit reports 18% of hate content moved to a different platform. This would be akin to saying "salmon30salmon saw a reduction in hate content when he stopped attending hate group meetings". While I appreciate any attempt to reduce hate, it isn't really something to cheer in this case. The goal is to reduce hate, and pushing people further into the fringes doesn't do that. Now instead…

> The goal is to reduce hate, and pushing people further into the fringes doesn't do that.

I mean, it may. Sure, there are whole websites which exist solely for refugees of Reddit's various bans, but normal people, as a general rule don't go there, so it's mostly just racists shouting into the void, rather than propagandizing others.

Post reply on HN