And they managed to botch it. It's gone wrong on two fronts.
The announcement states that:
> Today, in addition to applying Quarantines, we are banning a handful of communities that exist solely to annoy other redditors, prevent us from improving Reddit, and generally make Reddit worse for everyone else
Numerous commentators in the discussion of the new content policy pointed out that /r/coontown, loathsome as it was, does not seem to meet any of their criteria for banning.
Spez clarified:
> We didn't ban them for being racist. We banned them because we have to spend a disproportionate amount of time dealing with them. If we want to improve Reddit, we need more people, but CT's existence and popularity has also made recruiting here more difficult.
I couldn't find any further elaboration. In particular I'd like to know if "disproportionate amount of time dealing with them" actually meant dealing with things /r/coontown did, or dealing with people complaining about the existence of it.
It probably would have been a lot better if they had tried quarantining them first, to see if that worked. /r/coontown clearly met the conditions for quarantine: "We will Quarantine communities whose content would be considered extremely offensive to the average redditor".
The way they handled it left a lot of people thinking that yet again the published rules and the real rules do not match.
The second front on which this has gone wrong is /r/ShitRedditSays. Numerous people have pointed out that SRS exists solely to annoy other redditors. People posted numerous detailed documentation of SRS brigading, doxxing, and harassing people. As Spez tried to clarify the new policies, specifically to explain the justification for the bannings, many people pointed out most of his justifications applied to SRS. Spez has pretty much ignored those comments. I believe the last time he commented on SRS was in an earlier thread where he said they know about the brigading, but they want to stop it with technical means rather than banning.
Looks like there is still a lot of work ahead for Reddit.
Excellent. The racist users were spilling over into other subreddits. Just like how, before fatpeoplehate got banned, there were users going around making comments like "found the fatty". The /r/CoonTown posters were even worse in my opinion.
There will be a tantrum for a few days, but they'll get bored soon. It's like ripping off a bandaid quickly. Users like that just ruin the entire site for everyone.
Edit: apologies if this comment appears multiple times, posting from a train, poor connection.
Social media is dead anyway. If these horrible subreddits have proved anything, it's that any community can be destroyed by a small handful of committed, horrible people.
7 comments
[ 6.0 ms ] story [ 24.5 ms ] threadThe announcement states that:
> Today, in addition to applying Quarantines, we are banning a handful of communities that exist solely to annoy other redditors, prevent us from improving Reddit, and generally make Reddit worse for everyone else
Numerous commentators in the discussion of the new content policy pointed out that /r/coontown, loathsome as it was, does not seem to meet any of their criteria for banning.
Spez clarified:
> We didn't ban them for being racist. We banned them because we have to spend a disproportionate amount of time dealing with them. If we want to improve Reddit, we need more people, but CT's existence and popularity has also made recruiting here more difficult.
I couldn't find any further elaboration. In particular I'd like to know if "disproportionate amount of time dealing with them" actually meant dealing with things /r/coontown did, or dealing with people complaining about the existence of it.
It probably would have been a lot better if they had tried quarantining them first, to see if that worked. /r/coontown clearly met the conditions for quarantine: "We will Quarantine communities whose content would be considered extremely offensive to the average redditor".
The way they handled it left a lot of people thinking that yet again the published rules and the real rules do not match.
The second front on which this has gone wrong is /r/ShitRedditSays. Numerous people have pointed out that SRS exists solely to annoy other redditors. People posted numerous detailed documentation of SRS brigading, doxxing, and harassing people. As Spez tried to clarify the new policies, specifically to explain the justification for the bannings, many people pointed out most of his justifications applied to SRS. Spez has pretty much ignored those comments. I believe the last time he commented on SRS was in an earlier thread where he said they know about the brigading, but they want to stop it with technical means rather than banning.
Looks like there is still a lot of work ahead for Reddit.
There will be a tantrum for a few days, but they'll get bored soon. It's like ripping off a bandaid quickly. Users like that just ruin the entire site for everyone.
Edit: apologies if this comment appears multiple times, posting from a train, poor connection.