When r/The_Donald first started, I could have sworn it was a satire subreddit that made fun of Trump. Does anyone else remember that or were the posts just so outrageous I thought it was satire when it hit the front page?
When Trump started his campaign, the phrase "The Donald" was definitely more of a meme. The content of that sub was indeed "so-over-the-top-this-must-be-satire" type content... Pepe memes, crude photoshops of Trump as a God, the bots that would autoreply "THE WALL JUST GOT X FEET HIGHER!", the refrain of "GET THIS MAN A COAT" when a supporter of a dropped-out candidate would be lured in by the energy and the jokes. But that was more or less the entire facade of Trump's campaign. That language and those posts reached out to a significant constituency online of young, "edgy" men who love memeing and trolling. There was always an undercurrent of anti-black and anti-hispanic rhetoric, even when it seemed like satire.
I also believe it was satire the first few months, trolling pro-Sanders spam. When it was confirmed Clinton and Trump would win their nomination, the pro-Sanders spam sort of stopped and /r/The_Donald became a full support subreddit.
Or maybe it was simply Poe's law: some of us thought it was satire when it wasn't, and some of us thought it was Trump support when it wasn't.
She's right, and not just about r/T_D but in so many other subreddits, -- some stood up for the singular purpose of being racist, and some that are just racist on top of whatever other thing they represent -- and the uncomfortable truth is that to some degree any profitable online community/social network is forced to at minimum tolerate casual racism. To stamp it out is too tall a task for any social media platform of any significant mass... including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and so on.
It's also worth mentioning, at least, the conspiracy theory that Reddit is proactively censoring sinophobic speech on it's platform. But, I don't know if that's been proven for certain.
How exactly did Reddit "amplify" r/the_donald? First, they removed that subreddit from r/all and created Popular so non subscribed users wouldn't see it.
Then they quarantined it for being anti-police.
Then they tried to replace it's moderators with their own handpicked ones.
The old mods decided to lock it down so no one can post. It's been like that for a few months. It's a shell that points people to a reddit clone specfically for the_donald style posts.
It was allowed to flourish as a hate forum for years before being quarantined. Users brigaded other subreddits with little to no action from admins. Reddit management always did the least possible until they were forced by the media or user outcry.
It's incredibly cynical to now come out against internet bigotry after being one of the premier destinations hosting it for the past few years.
They famously abused the stickying bug for years to get their content to the homepage. Reddit even changed the /r/all algorithm to specifically address gaming and exploitation by TD. The quarantine system was also introduced to isolate TD from the rest of the site, like a gangrenous limb. It's simply not the case that they were rule abiding.
That was not against the rules and was nerfed pretty fast - certainly not for years. And then they were artificially censored, held down, attacked and lied about and doxed.
Subs like /r/OurPresident are still using this mechanism to this day to get election-influencing agitprop to the front page. It hasn't been nerfed. Meanwhile Reddit sits on their hands and sighs wondering if anything can be done about this, on the site they administrate.
Is this satire? I've never heard of that sub. And all conservative or even center political subs are massively manipulated and will never show up on the frontpage ever. Which is their good right of course, but Reddit is absolutely overwhelmingly left with all the major default subreddits bought.
I am sorry, but it is a subreddit about a president who was somehow elected by nearly 50% of American population. So whatever’s happening there, it implicitly represents the ideas and wishes of quite a lot of people.
freedom of speech just means the government can't create laws to censor you. free speech is not free from repercussions and it's also not guaranteed by private companies.
> freedom of speech just means the government can't create laws to censor you.
No, it absolutely doesn't. You're confusing Freedom of Speech with the 1st Amendment, which is a single instantiation of the value of Freedom of Speech.
Yes but a private company has absolutely no requirement to provide you with free speech forum.
Also Freedom of Speech is nothing if it is not somehow enshrined in law. There is no universal freedom of speech, like gravity or the speed of light. Freedom of Speech is whatever is detailed in law, so the 1st Amendment is probably the best example of it however. It allows hate speech (if you dont call for violence), because you can be free to express your opinions without the government shutting you down or arresting you. But that protection does not mean others cannot avoid you or withdraw services from you if they diagree with you.
I used to think this same thing until fairly recently. I made arguments that "it's not your website" meant that they didn't have a responsibility to uphold restrictions aimed at government.
I now think this is an incorrect view. Freedom of Speech is a societal value, and yes, the First Amendment is where the U.S. holds its governments to the standard. But if it is a value first, before it is a law, then we really ought to expect more from what is rapidly becoming our primary form of discourse.
We should value Freedom of Speech wherever speech occurs. I'd argue that these days, especially in a pandemic, the majority of our ideas get exchanged over the internet, in forums, on Facebook, on Twitter, and not in the public square or in newspapers. Holding that Free Speech is required for a free society, requires that we should expect its protection even when the venue changes.
The government must not censor. But we ought to hold private companies who monetize public discourse to the standards we value. Whether those requirements, those values, require laws applicable to these new venues is separate debate, and definitely worth having.
We really ought to require that these companies should not silence or censor someone speaking their mind.
It's a good question, because from what I recall The_Donald actually gamed Reddit by itself by using stickied posts to drop a "reverse-anchor" to the tops of r/all and r/popular... I wanna say every day, or perhaps multiple times a day. They used Reddit's own system better than almost any other sub, and I don't think Reddit actively promoted T_D, ever.
But of course by the time Reddit could stifle T_D sufficiently without damaging other subs, the boom was pretty much over.
I'm unsure if she was thinking of this argument, but Reddit does foot the bill to host r/the_donald on their servers, which gave it exposure to millions of people.
This mentality is why I believe every centralized social media platform has a limited shelf-life. We don't have a lot of discussions like this about what people should be allowed to say in an e-mail, or snail mail, or on a soapbox in Times Square as long as they aren't harassing anyone directly. If you aim to run a global social media platform, moderating in a way that is satisfies every one is an unsolvable boolean satisfiability problem and acting on outrage from users is a vicious cycle. Eventually the proprietors will (understandably) start to feel responsible for the content that is posted on their platform and take actions that anger large parts of their userbase. The next generation will use the next hip platform that isn't encumbered by this legacy and then the cycle will continue.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 124 ms ] threadOr maybe it was simply Poe's law: some of us thought it was satire when it wasn't, and some of us thought it was Trump support when it wasn't.
It's also worth mentioning, at least, the conspiracy theory that Reddit is proactively censoring sinophobic speech on it's platform. But, I don't know if that's been proven for certain.
Then they quarantined it for being anti-police.
Then they tried to replace it's moderators with their own handpicked ones.
The old mods decided to lock it down so no one can post. It's been like that for a few months. It's a shell that points people to a reddit clone specfically for the_donald style posts.
What more do people want?
It's incredibly cynical to now come out against internet bigotry after being one of the premier destinations hosting it for the past few years.
freedom of speech just means the government can't create laws to censor you. free speech is not free from repercussions and it's also not guaranteed by private companies.
No, it absolutely doesn't. You're confusing Freedom of Speech with the 1st Amendment, which is a single instantiation of the value of Freedom of Speech.
Also Freedom of Speech is nothing if it is not somehow enshrined in law. There is no universal freedom of speech, like gravity or the speed of light. Freedom of Speech is whatever is detailed in law, so the 1st Amendment is probably the best example of it however. It allows hate speech (if you dont call for violence), because you can be free to express your opinions without the government shutting you down or arresting you. But that protection does not mean others cannot avoid you or withdraw services from you if they diagree with you.
I now think this is an incorrect view. Freedom of Speech is a societal value, and yes, the First Amendment is where the U.S. holds its governments to the standard. But if it is a value first, before it is a law, then we really ought to expect more from what is rapidly becoming our primary form of discourse.
We should value Freedom of Speech wherever speech occurs. I'd argue that these days, especially in a pandemic, the majority of our ideas get exchanged over the internet, in forums, on Facebook, on Twitter, and not in the public square or in newspapers. Holding that Free Speech is required for a free society, requires that we should expect its protection even when the venue changes.
The government must not censor. But we ought to hold private companies who monetize public discourse to the standards we value. Whether those requirements, those values, require laws applicable to these new venues is separate debate, and definitely worth having.
We really ought to require that these companies should not silence or censor someone speaking their mind.
All of that said, there is no right to be heard.
Yes? Freedom of speech doesn't need to be there for popular ideas.
It's a good question, because from what I recall The_Donald actually gamed Reddit by itself by using stickied posts to drop a "reverse-anchor" to the tops of r/all and r/popular... I wanna say every day, or perhaps multiple times a day. They used Reddit's own system better than almost any other sub, and I don't think Reddit actively promoted T_D, ever.
But of course by the time Reddit could stifle T_D sufficiently without damaging other subs, the boom was pretty much over.