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Reddit Bans Five Communities In New Anti-Harassment Campaign

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Re: Reddit Bans Five Communities In New Anti-Harassment Campaign

#91
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got to give Christopher Poole credit, he was never dumb enough to try to police 4chan. This is as laughable as trying to get rid of trolling on IRC.

Yes, he was. When GamerGate happened, that's exactly what he attempted to do. He replaced most of the mods on the site within a very short amount of time and the heavy handed policing started. Most of 4chan left in response. Many alternative chan sites were started, including 8ch.net.

Touche, I stand corrected.

Re: Reddit Bans Five Communities In New Anti-Harassment Campaign

#92

Notch has the right idea. Why not just block the subreddits you find offensive? https://twitter.com/notch/status/608706518972788736 Reddit just put the world on notice that they are willing to become user babysitters, and historically this has never ended well for the company involved.

I think the problem is when people organize a trolling campaign in one subreddit and the conduct it in another.

Re: Reddit Bans Five Communities In New Anti-Harassment Campaign

#93
post #8

I don't know how to feel about this. On one hand I'm against censorship, on the other I'm against internet bullying. /r/FatPeopleHate was engaging in both. In the end reddit is a private site that can do what it wants. Wikipedia removes things all the time and sites like 4chan remove all sorts of extremely offensive material. I'm glad the mods of the hate oriented subreddits have been shadow banned, I actually think…

> On one hand I'm against censorship, I feel like censorship isn't the right word for this but I can't think of a better one.

Keeping bad content off your own site is just good old-fashioned moderation.

Most forums will delete stuff like this - I assume HN would too, and no one bats an eye.

Re: Reddit Bans Five Communities In New Anti-Harassment Campaign

#94
post #44

This article dramatically understates the magnitude of the shitstorm that is currently unfolding. Check out http://www.reddit.com/r/all/ if you feel like seeing all the ugliness. (And if anyone has any doubts that this is ultimately about harassment, count how many of the posts on the front page (and their comments) are made up of personal attacks and/or obscenities targeted at CEO Ellen Pao.) I don't fault the Reddi…

You've got to give Christopher Poole credit, he was never dumb enough to try to police 4chan. This is as laughable as trying to get rid of trolling on IRC.

I feel offended by your recent action(s). Please read http://stop-irc-bullying.eu/stop

Re: Reddit Bans Five Communities In New Anti-Harassment Campaign

#95
post #27
post #2

Clarification from the Reddit Admins on their announcement post indicate that they're banning subs where moderators either took no action or encouraged organized harassment (as in going to other subs or websites and actively harassing the person in question) as opposed to subs that just post awful things about people.

You'd think so, but they're banning any new sub that attempts to be a "new" /r/fatpeoplehate -- if it's not about "banning ideas", but "banning behaviour", then I find that somewhat at odds. I think there's a simpler answer: FPH ended up on the front-page of /r/all constantly, and the Imgur staff "doxxing" (I've heard right before they were banned there was something happening regarding harassing the imgur editors ou…

Or, if you're monetizing a website and one of the largest hosts of your content (imgur) is being actively harassed by a minority of your users, you find a way to mend the insult.

It's becoming more clear that Reddit took action specifically because of the Imgur insult, and that makes a lot of sense from a business perspective. But from a wider perspective it looks very focused and targeted - not in a good way.

Re: Reddit Bans Five Communities In New Anti-Harassment Campaign

#97

Reddit has become a real cesspool over the past few years. You'll always find misogyny front and center and you don't have to dig to find racism.

I've been on reddit for 8 years, and lurked before that. The top submissions and comments have always, and consistently, been standard-issue PC/liberal in their overall view.

The world view of the founders was pretty clearly "tech libertarianism" (incidentally, not a view I share), which, in the context of the site, meant a hands-off moderation policy, which allowed the site to deteriorate in many ways but flourish in many others.

Re: Reddit Bans Five Communities In New Anti-Harassment Campaign

#98

This article dramatically understates the magnitude of the shitstorm that is currently unfolding. Check out http://www.reddit.com/r/all/ if you feel like seeing all the ugliness. (And if anyone has any doubts that this is ultimately about harassment, count how many of the posts on the front page (and their comments) are made up of personal attacks and/or obscenities targeted at CEO Ellen Pao.) I don't fault the Reddi…

I never understood why reddit was so lenient with its community. There are so many racists and hateful subreddits, that attract more and more people like that, that makes the community as a whole worse.

I'm really glad that moderation actions like that are taken, and I'm sad that people reply to that by "harassing" the CEO...

Hopefully such people will get frustrated by such events and will eventually leave reddit.

Note that it's mostly people posting to /r/punchablefaces that are reaching r/all right. Another hateful reddit for you...

PS: FWIW, /r/all has always been pretty bad. If you want a good reddit experience do like me: unsubscribe from most subreddits and suscribe to smaller subreddits with active moderators.

Re: Reddit Bans Five Communities In New Anti-Harassment Campaign

#99
post #50

This article dramatically understates the magnitude of the shitstorm that is currently unfolding. Check out http://www.reddit.com/r/all/ if you feel like seeing all the ugliness. (And if anyone has any doubts that this is ultimately about harassment, count how many of the posts on the front page (and their comments) are made up of personal attacks and/or obscenities targeted at CEO Ellen Pao.) I don't fault the Reddi…

Not to mention there's a game of whack-a-mole going on where similar subreddits have been banned including fatpeoplehate2, 3, 4, 5, 8, and 9.

If they really want to go down this road, it feels like there's only one destination: real Know-Your-Customer-esque identity verification to prevent registration of duplicate accounts, like banks and X.509 CAs do.

If-and-when they do that, they will finally have an actually-effective tool (in the form of being able to ban people "for good") to stop harassment. Until then, it will just go on forever.

Re: Reddit Bans Five Communities In New Anti-Harassment Campaign

#100
This is like dream come true for voat dot co. I highly doubt there is going to be mass migration like it was with Digg but Voat is going to get quite a few users in the near future for what it's worth.

In any case, Reddit has become a new mainstream site full of propaganda, censorship, shadowbanning, hand-picked news, etc. I've noticed a sharp decline in the last year or so.

It's not even their new policy, it just feels like it Reddit got big enough to finally join any other mass media source of information, not in a good way.

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