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Former Reddit CEO says the site's about to be purged

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Re: Former Reddit CEO says the site's about to be purged

#91

Post by fixermark »

ocfx wrote: post #82
fixermark wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is going to sound very Animal Farm, but I'm going to lay it out there because it's the truth of the matter. There's free speech and free speech. Reddit can advocate that it's in favor of free speech while simultaneously banning the sharing of child pornography, bestiality, death threats, and revenge porn. So does Twitter. So does Facebook. So does Google. If there's an argument to be had here, it's an argument a…

Child porn, beastiality, death threats, ande revenge porn are illegal, being racist or hating fat people isn't.

Why are they illegal?

Revenge porn specifically?

(Follow the train of thought to its conclusion).

Re: Former Reddit CEO says the site's about to be purged

#92

Post by baddox »

johrn wrote: post #88
baddox wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would the targets of hate speech be in subreddits dedicated to that hate speech?

They wouldn't be, but neither is that hate speech limited to the subreddits that are dedicated for it. I am 100% certain that I could go to the comments of any top post on pics, videos, funny, games and probably a dozen other default subs and find some hate speech with a positive score. Remove the subreddits that these people call home, and they automatically feel less welcomed on the site.

> I am 100% certain that I could go to the comments of any top post on pics, videos, funny, games and probably a dozen other default subs and find some hate speech with a positive score.

You're saying you could go look for hate speech and find it. That doesn't seem all that troubling to me. Don't go look for it, and you will find it much less frequently.

Re: Former Reddit CEO says the site's about to be purged

#93

Post by waterlesscloud »

The reason this is a terrible mistake for Reddit is that now their next several years of corporate narrative will be dominated by which subs should be banned.

They won't really be able to get much else attention for anything else. When they try, the conversation will be hijacked and diverted to "When will you ban subreddit X?"

Once the door for this kind of thing is open this wide, it's all they're going to be able to talk about, for years.

From a purely cold-blooded business perspective, it's a fatal move, just in a way that may not be immediately obvious to them.

Re: Former Reddit CEO says the site's about to be purged

#94

Post by fixermark »

chc wrote: post #86
austenallred wrote: post #18

I honestly wouldn't mind a "purge." I don't necessarily agree that drawing the line as to what is appropriate on a website is necessarily the destruction of people being able to express themselves. HackerNews doesn't allow racism, but I don't feel my right to express my opinion (for the most part - the hivemind that is caused by upvoting comments is troubling, but another issue altogether). If people want to be blata…

Not really. It seems like the Internet equivalent of burning books. Just because I think the content of the book is awful doesn't mean I'm in favor of book-burning. You might say, "Oh, we'll only burn books that are offensive" — but that is just as true for everyone who has ever burned books. There are many books that actually are awful and not worthy of any respect, but we still look askance at book-burning as a pra…

It's less like burning books and more like urban renewal. People don't consider reddit threads to be stores of historical knowledge; they're street-corners where people mingle. If those people are mingling to do illegal things or form hate mobs, the town is under no obligation to keep the street corner available to them.

... which, actually, may draw an interesting parallel between book burning and gentrification. Perhaps a topic for another day. ;)

Re: Former Reddit CEO says the site's about to be purged

#95

Post by fixermark »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #93

The reason this is a terrible mistake for Reddit is that now their next several years of corporate narrative will be dominated by which subs should be banned. They won't really be able to get much else attention for anything else. When they try, the conversation will be hijacked and diverted to "When will you ban subreddit X?" Once the door for this kind of thing is open this wide, it's all they're going to be able t…

It's a distraction, but time will tell if it's a fatal move.

Re: Former Reddit CEO says the site's about to be purged

#96

Post by clavalle »

johrn wrote: post #72
clavalle wrote: post #53

I have a feeling that Reddit, with its focus on growth of the user base, is just going to play to the lowest common denominator. As soon as it is filled with what amounts to user curated network TV levels of content and the banal advertising mindset that goes with it, it will become Just Another News Aggregator and will not inspire the level of engagement it has enjoyed until now. Reddit doesn't have a sticky network…

> they will lose the tasty morsel they could currently be enjoying. That tasty morsel of hardcore racism, rabid misogyny and all sorts of other fun hate groups, and the people that defend them because anyone should be allowed to say anything they want? I don't understand why so many people think that getting rid of these groups is going to suddenly implode all the thousands of smaller, more focused communities that y…

I don't mind if they get rid of the hate groups but you have to be careful -- hate is a very plastic term. If people feel like their self formed communities might come under some sort of 'distaste' police, they might just pack up and go somewhere else. Most people aren't afraid that they'll go after subreddits that are blatantly racist, they are afraid that is just the opening salvo. They are afraid that the whole place and discussions are going to end up being monitored, shaped, and censored to benefit the Reddit corporate image. And what good is a discussion board where discussions must be approved for mass consumption or worse, shaped for mass consumption?

You might say, 'that wouldn't happen' and it probably wouldn't but the leadership has not been very open about what they are doing and where they draw the line so people fill the unknown with the worst case.

They need a policy of containment, not eradication except in the most egregious circumstances or where the content is actually illegal. What they do need is better tools to wall them off and detect brigaiding so that kind of business, where the hate spills out, can be nipped in the bud.

Re: Former Reddit CEO says the site's about to be purged

#97

Post by fixermark »

baddox wrote: post #78
SwellJoe wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, why are you here at HN, which has much stricter guidelines and much more active moderators than reddit will ever have site-wide? Reddit is still vastly more "free" than HN, and yet...the caliber of conversation here is generally higher (not always, and the HN demographic has its blind spots), and I believe it is precisely because it has no tolerance for fools. In short, I don't care about racist's "right" to rant…

> So, why are you here at HN HN is roughly the equivalent of a single subreddit on reddit. I don't have a problem with individual subreddits with strict moderation, because those policies don't affect the policies of other subreddits. HN doesn't (as far as I know) intend to be a host for a plethora of communities each dedicated to a specific topic or hobby. > Reddit is still vastly more "free" than HN, and yet...the…

Are those subreddits threatened by a ban on /r/fatpeoplehate?

If not, there's very little to be concerned about.

Re: Former Reddit CEO says the site's about to be purged

#98

Post by fixermark »

baddox wrote: post #81
johrn wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there's obviously some middle ground between 'free-for-all' and 'only your subreddits' that allows for moderation of the subreddits that are literally evil.

Sure, there is plenty of middle ground. It's a continuum. I just personally prefer the free end of the continuum.

I think you still get the free end of the continuum if /r/coontown is gone.

Re: Former Reddit CEO says the site's about to be purged

#99

Post by fixermark »

AnkhMorporkian wrote: post #10
fixermark wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He'd be justified in having a grudge, as a former CEO. But I think it's more that he has no f---- to give and is 100% willing to speak his mind on the topic. Not a trait I'd want to see in all the CEOs out there, but seeing it in one former founder is... Refreshing. ;)

Wong is not one of the founders of reddit. He was appointed CEO.

My mistake; thank you for the correction. Original comment updated.

Re: Former Reddit CEO says the site's about to be purged

#100

Post by dang »

vonklaus wrote: post #70
dang wrote: post #37

The rule of thumb for ongoing stories on HN is to have a new thread each time there's significant new information, and (hopefully) have it point to the most substantive source. Neither this story nor the article comes close to passing that test, so I'm burying this post as a dupe.

As a rule of thumb it is good to bury posts that are duplicative so the front page isn't devoted entirely to a single subject. However, it does seem like a conflict of interest given YCs involvement in reddit.

HN has had an abundance of major threads about Reddit recently. Two from the last couple days alone:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9884949

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9880424

We take conflict of interest questions seriously, enough that it trumps other concerns overall, but not at the level of every single individual post. I can understand people disagreeing with this particular call—indeed, if enough people disagreed we'd happily reverse it; we're not attached to any particular decision—but no one paying attention to HN is going to think that we're banishing the Reddit saga or anything like that.

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