I’m a sucker for conspiracy theories, like the Bermuda Triangle. Aliens abducting cows and lizards living inside the Queen. I don’t believe in any of it, but I’ve just loved that stuff since I was a kid. So I actually used to follow /r/conspiracy, but I stopped around the 2016 election when everything started being about American politics.
Not sure what happened, but it went from “the lone gunmen” to “angry American central” over night, and the place has royally sucked since.
Nah r/politics is completely unhinged. I have rarely seen that level of vitriol anywhere else on reddit, even on Trump subs. This isn't just about ideas, this is about how people behave and talk. It's surreal.
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:
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.
It strikes me that having a duality of political groups like this doesn't mean they both have equal legitimacy or deserve equal platform.
American conservatives have pretty eagerly woven prejudice into the ideological fabric of the party. Similarly the party seems willing to promote or at least enable blatant criminality.
They made their socially-regressive bed and now they can lie in it. "Fiscal conservatives" who don't see themselves in the rest of the picture would be right to feel disenfranchised.
> American conservatives have pretty eagerly woven prejudice into the ideological fabric of the party. Similarly the party seems willing to promote or at least enable blatant criminality.
Wow, what a complete load of horse dung.
American Conservatives aren't the ones burning down cities, looting businesses, beating people up, threatening people with violence, and demanding white people give up their suburban homes on an almost daily basis -- justifying it all under the false guise of oppression.
The basis is the last 60 years or so. Looking earlier than the seventies or so and the parties are recognizable in name only. There's been a pretty radical shift in party ideologies, particularly identity politics, over the last century.
Republicans of half a century ago would have hanged the modern republican party politicians as traitors and seditionists.
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.
I mean, I've been seeing out of my window in downtown Seattle hate groups marching on a nearly nightly basis, the difference with these hate groups being that they burn down vehicles, buildings, and other properties and violently clash with the police in order to forcefully enact their hateful/racist political policies, that hate me because of the color of my skin and the political polices I support. But sure, there was one time an entirely peaceful demonstration by people on the other side of the aisle, that was so hateful! They have to be banned, deplatformed, censored, removed, destroyed. But the people roaming my city, setting fire to the building opposite of mine a few weeks back because the owner is an "evil white capitalist"? They're good to go, no hate there.
Private property includes the freedom to restrict what occurs on that property. Reddit is private property.
Same goes for Hacker News.
Let freedom ring!
edit: guess people don't like freedom :-(
Would Hacker News be "censoring" me if they deleted my submission to TIMECUBE? Isn't it "MAH RAIGHT" to proselytize my sincere and deeply-held beliefs about TIMECUBE?
Are you CENSORIZING MAH FREEZE PEECH by downvoting and thus hiding from public view, this comment?
They are free to enact censorship, you could say. And users are free to identify where that censorship has taken place, react to it and let it inform our opinion or use of reddit.
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 can cite the recent "Conservative Bigots v. Twitter and others" cases, every single thread of political philosophy from anarchism to totalitarianism in which private property is allowed, and the terms of service that people agree to when using an online resource...
...and all they can do is wave their hands and chant "censorship".
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.
If you think it is wrong to mock the southern accent, and the oxy-addicted incesty bigoted white trash who speak using it, it is only right and proper that you also think it is ok to have banned the subreddits Reddit is being criticized for banning.
But faux-libertarian techbros only believe in what they believe when it benefits them.
Strangely enough, I think it also wrong to refer to people with southern accents as "oxy-addicted incesty bigoted white trash".
That said, there is a difference between thinking something wrong, and thinking something should be banned - esp when you conflate censorship of an individual within a community (HN poster), with censorship of the whole community itself (a subreddit).
Are you calling me a techbro because I'm posting on HN? Doesn't that mean you are too?
They clearly outline their definition of "hate content" in their post about it. [0] They go over the methodology and dig a bit into the results. It looks like a good start.
>They clearly outline their definition of "hate content" in their post about it.
Am I missing something here? I read the post and it's not clearly defined at all. All they did is mention was:
>To generate and categorize the list of keywords, we used a wide variety of resources and AutoModerator* rules from large subreddits that deal with abuse regularly.
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.
Even if that's what they do, so what? It is their website. They can do what that want with it. If you don't like it, don't use it. You are free to say and believe what you want, but that doesn't mean you can do it on my website.
Ignoring the fact that a private entity should be able to censor as they see fit on their own platform, Reddit is a business, it's not a charity. If a subset of users are hurting their business model, driving multiples of other users away from the site, or creating legal liability far in excess of the value the problematic subset generates, then Reddit absolutely should be patting themselves on the back for mitigating risk by removing those problematic users. It's a sound business decision.
>If a subset of users are hurting their business model, driving multiples of other users away from the site, or creating legal liability far in excess of the value the problematic subset generates,
is that's what's happening though? Are advertisers leaving reddit? AFAIK advertisers can already decide what subreddits their ads appear on. Are people leaving reddit to a "nicer" platform? What type of legal liabilities is reddit being subject to?
Nearly every woman I know who uses reddit doesn't announce their gender. Plenty of my chosen family won't touch it with a fifty-foot pole simply because they're way too likely to run into something that genuinely makes the rest of their day harder.
And, anecdotal as it may be, I think it's interesting to mention these aren't softies either... the thing they all share in common is that they work too long and too hard making ends meet to willfully spend time browsing a site that can go from fun to making them feel very unsafe in the blink of an eye. Sure you can "just get over it" when you read something nasty online. But if you've lived your life in relative fear, it takes a ton of energy to do so.
I can't speak to if they are leaving Reddit, but they are absolutely leaving other social media platforms such as Facebook as well as traditional media platforms for exactly this reason.
> Are people leaving reddit to a "nicer" platform?
I don't have this data at scale. Anecdata I have suggests that most people I know have been turned off by the sheer level of vitrol which appears on Reddit these days.
> What type of legal liabilities is reddit being subject to?
Regulatory risk in the form of being made responsible for user submitted content which they really don't want to be. If even a subset of hateful users go on to commit violence in the real world and it turns out that they fermented their ideology on Reddit and Reddit did nothing, it could renew calls by lawmakers to make site operators responsible for user submitted content. Such a regulatory change could potentially take down the entire business.
There is also a smaller, related business continuity risk from Reddit's providers. Look at what happened to 8chan. In response to 8chan not regulating hate speech, CloudFlare terminated their service and no US provider would touch them with a 10 foot pole. it took them 3 months and a total rebrand to get back up. While Reddit is a much larger entity, they are not immune to this risk.
Booting these users gives them plausible deniability at little cost and also allows them to make a stronger case to lawmakers if questioned.
> 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.
So between Reddit, YouTube, and Google News, we’ve got a bunch of websites that have become unbelievably and visibly corrupt but whose business models are so difficult to replicate and navigate that no one else can do what they do.
There are plenty of alternatives that lean towards freedom of expression at all costs. I think the possibility of building another thing like Reddit has been proven (even if less popular and on a smaller scale), IIRC r/the_donald ended up moving to their own Reddit clone.
>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.).
Theoretically both should fall under the same umbrella as "ideology", but in reality religion is given special protections. eg. in US law, religion is a protected class (you discriminate on it), whereas political affiliation isn't.
Classic case of /r/politics where if you say anything negative about Israel (the state and its government) then you are automatically flagged and banned as an antisemite
That would be reasonable. For example, if someone chooses very orthodox or liberal beliefs (whether Christian, Muslim or Jewish or Atheist) and they clash with your beliefs, you should be able to fire them at will.
When most people describe Judaism this way they are only thinking of Ashkenazi Jews. My family comes from eastern Europe. We are not the same race as Ethiopian Jews. Nor do we have the same food, music or culture any more than a Christian from Mexico and a Christian from China.
The idea of race is deeply flawed and riddled with contradictions. it has no real meaning in terms of genetics.
Are you finding fault with my point or simply trying to expand or add color?
I hear a dissenting bent but am unable to connect your comment to the topic of what makes immutable vs mutable characteristics.
Also, I cannot help but observe, whether or not race has meaning in genetics, we cannot simply pretend the social construct does not exist. Therefore it's still relevant & topical to discrimination & protected classes. It's literally right there in the Civil Rights Act.
Yes, I was disagreeing with your description of Jews as a race. It's a very askenazi-centric view. Jews experienced a diaspora a very long time ago and are very diverse.
"Hate speech" is a very specific term, and I'd guess Reddit's deliberately avoiding using it. They're targeting hate in the broad sense, the sense that they want to build communities where people are nice rather than mean.
I don't think that's fair. It's hardly unprecedented for a website to explicitly ban unapproved opinions, so if that was what Reddit really wanted, why wouldn't they just do it?
I don’t see why the target of the hateful comment should matter when deciding that something should be removed. If I comment in more vulgar terms saying that “penguins are evil and people who like them should die”, that’s likely to be seen as hateful and Reddit may decide it doesn’t have its place on there platform, the fact that I’m talking about love for penguin doesn’t really matters.
We aren’t talking about a government definition of hateful, in which case you would expect limits to be set by immutable characteristics, instead it’s about Reddit deciding what is off limit for them.
Religion is definitely not an immutable characteristic - there are many ex-theists, and people often change religion on marriage.
Gender is a can of worms - sex is immutable, gender seems to be (like religion or race) a socially conditioned performance of expected behaviour. Personally I don’t think it’s helpful - we should see ourselves as unique individuals with agency - much less immutable.
> "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?
It's a website with 138,000 subreddits. That sounds like a pretty conventional distribution, where 5% of the site contributed 20% of the problem. That's about what you'd expect from the Pareto principle, which says that 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.
Removed but still enforced aka we have written and unwritten rules
>While the rule on hate protects such groups, it does not protect all groups or all forms of identity. For example, the rule does not protect groups of people who are in the majority or who promote such attacks of hate.
When punching down it's important to dress it up so it looks like punching up. Attack the innocent who look like the guilty because the guilty are too hard to reach.
I don't think it should be. I think punches above a certain threshold of force shouldn't be permitted, regardless of whether they're aimed left, right, up, down, or diagonally. Also, who exactly is definitively judging these directions in each of these cases? What's the judgment criteria when two people reside among a distribution of different relative directions across multiple different parameters?
I think eliminating double standards in the enforcement of these policies is crucial for them to be effective and accepted by a community. You're just trading one set of implicit and explicit biases in for another, and many of the same issues start to bubble up. Yes, certainly not all of the same issues in the case of one group wielding more capability to carry out a threat than another group, but many of the important ones, especially when it comes to matters of epistemology and reasoning.
I thought we are trying to stop hate for characteristics someone has no control over (sex, sexuality, race, gender, disability, nationality). I think any "punches" thrown at a group that was just born that way is not fair and the direction should not be a factor. Shouldn't someone be judged on their character and thoughts, not their biology or circumstances? If you aren't doing that then you aren't being genuine for stopping stereotyping and hate.
This includes "majority" populations and those more privileged. We shouldn't give hateful or blanket statements for them as they never decided to be that way. Putting entire groups of people based on some trait they were born with on blast is wrong.
Also the direction is a slippery slope too. "Well yes I can direct blanket negative/stereotypical/hate statements against Indians because I myself am a disabled, trans minority" ad-infinitum.
> I thought we are trying to stop hate for characteristics someone has no control over (sex, sexuality, race, gender, disability, nationality).
Some of use are, but we seem to be losing.
> Shouldn't someone be judged on their character and thoughts, not their biology or circumstances?
This is considered racist now. This was explained to me by a friend that if a person wants to be seen as a "$race man", than not seeing him that way would be offensive.
The solution to "stop the punching" isn't to demand oppressed people not be upset. The solution is to stop punching down. We stop racism by reversing the material effects of racism, not by spreading an imaginary "color blind" ideology. The last thing we should be doing right now is pretending that race doesn't matter.
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" it reads darker, based on a belief that men subject women to violence specifically based on their gender/sexuality. Even if it's clearly not meant to be taken literally, there's still a dark underpinning culturally (e.g. see Marilyn Manson's 'I Want to Kill You Like They Do in The Movies’)
As a result, "kill all women" is much less likely to be said in mixed company; the more common communication discriminating against women will be longer form, and not easily string-matched.
Therefore, with 'even' enforcement, an offhand complaint about men's place in society will often instantly trigger an automatic deletion/ban, while a misogynistic screed will require human review to be removed.
Well said - while this point is somewhat subtle, I think the real reason most people "miss" it is because of a human tendency to overlook pragmatism in the context of language/communication while engaging in even non-heated ideological battles. I.e. they tend to turn a blind eye to colloquial meaning and real consequences in favor of a bias toward literalism as a bad rhetorical tactic.
I really agree with this. An American Indian friend of mine once said, "It's not like we want another Trail of Tears." Folks who have been beat down know people don't deserve that just for being a certain way.
Now if you're advocating a worldview that carries implicit, targeted violence (looking at you, Neo-Nazis) I think it's a different story. At that point, it becomes a question of what is possible and practical to reduce the overall amount of violence.. even if it means punching someone who wants you dead or subjugated.
I agree "kill all women" reads and is darker for a variety of reasons, but I don't think either statement should be acceptable. I think a high percentage of people who would say "kill all women" would also reply that they're being non-literal and sardonic, but I don't think that would make it acceptable. Both phrases should trigger human review and a ban, in my opinion.
Even without the literal meaning, vitriol towards gigantic groups of people based on at-birth traits isn't healthy or rational for anyone. (To make the comparison more palatable, imagine a complaint about an ex-romantic partner followed by a frustrated exclamation of "fuck men" or "fuck women", depending on the parties involved. I don't see why either of these statements should be privileged over the other.) I think double standards should be eliminated across the board, rather than tipping the scales so that a side that historically wielded them is now subjected to them.
Reddit admins have their own window of discourse and it's certainly colored by personal biases. But, it should say a lot that "Let's kill all the lawyers" would likely result in a ban.
Reddit risks closing the window of discourse so tightly that it becomes a Facebook, Instagram or Tik Tok. The problem for Reddit, of course, is that there is already a Facebook, Instagram and Tik Tok.
But everyone says "oh you're missing the context" when challenged on their hateful rhetoric, and no targeted group enjoys being told they ought to die. I don't really see why anyone should be allowed to spread hate speech, even if they don't mean it literally or it doesn't "read darker".
I don't read the parent as advocating the opinion that the people subjected to the "less dark" form shouldn't consider it a kind of hate speech or shouldn't feel offended by it. The context is moderation, and why it makes sense to treat the cases differently - that doesn't mean simply always allowing one and always disallowing the other. The point is that prudent and pragmatic judgement is necessary.
That doesn't really change my perspective. I'd be very frustated if a moderator told me "well, we generally don't allow hate speech, but let's be prudent and allow it when it's targeted at you".
My point is more that prudent and pragmatic judgment is nearly impossible, if your goal is to be seen as a neutral platform for a large collection of communities.
The problem is that a significant chunk of the community believes that it's not hate speech but simple hyperbole in response to uni-directional injustice.
It's easy to string match, bans/deletions can be instant and abrupt. They see the quick removal of their post and compare it to what they perceive as genuinely hateful posts that stay up because the post cleverly avoids violations that are easy to include in content policies.
And I'm not saying you're wrong. Lots of people do think their hate speech is simple hyperbole, or that it's justified by misdeeds of the group they hate. But what's the point of a rule against hate speech if you're not willing to tell those people no?
It's a common meme in some circles, reflecting a claim that facially neutral rules against hate speech depend implicitly on who's speaking and to whom it's directed.
I think that meme/claim is indeed substantiated in many cases. It's a form of implicit bias. Implicit biases are very culturally-mediated and can exist from any individual or group towards any other individual or group. I don't know if reddit staff suffer from that bias, but it's evident some people in this thread do.
Just to clarify, I see this as a problem that may be impossible to solve.
For me personally, I think that "kill all men" or "all men are trash" can have a harmful impact (particularly on boys) even when stated as hyperbole in response to systemic misogyny.
Or we can agree that both statements are wrong, and we should not wait and see the effects of allowing one over the other (we already are seeing dangerous effects however).
> 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" it reads darker, based on a belief that men subject women to violence specifically based on their gender/sexuality.
This might have been true once but the ascent of fourth-wave (misandrist) feminism has made short shrift with the assumption that women who say "kill all men" have a different intention than men who say "kill all women". In both cases it is most likely not to be taken literally, in both cases (humoristic intentions excepted) the message has a dark underpinning. Where in the "kill all women" case there might be a background of literal truth, in the "kill all men" case there is a background of wishful thinking, an idea that society is better off without men, that men are evil and unredeemable.
Wouldn't the difference there be between venting resulting in hurt feelings rather than targeted violence?
Reports of genuine, targeted violence against reactionaries are almost non-existent while just a few days ago three trans women were nearly killed while waiting for a cab. If banning r/dropthet (a transphobic subreddit) reduces the amount of eyeballs absorbing phobic talking points that has to be a good thing, no?
I always find these sorts of discussions sorely lacking an understanding of The Tolerance Paradox. Hopefully more folks will begin to see the implicit violence present in minority targeted hate speech. It really does lead to loss of life all too often.
Yeah I lurked for way too long. Spent like half of yesterday rate limited, which is understandable. :)
I actually have a few mutuals who have been on the ground in Portland and I'm in the southeast.
I had seen this stuff when it first happened but it's just hard to pay much attention with other deadly force being deployed IMO. If you google Skylor Jernigan, you get nothing but local articles. There's a strong false equivalency being deployed there.
e: almost forgot where I am! I rarely get to make this point but here we go: nitpicking out individualized acts of violence to discredit a large, decentralized movement is the exact same thing as FUD, IMO. It's a tactic for maintaining unequal power dynamics.
> nitpicking out individualized acts of violence to discredit a large, decentralized movement
That would forbid criticism of any violent decentralized movement.
> There's a strong false equivalency being deployed there.
I don't think there's any equivalency. There's no widespread looting and assault from the center or the right here.
Antifa specifically are willing to use violence to suppress disbelievers as part of their manifesto, and have handbooks re: playing to the invisible audience, goading people into fight responses, etc. However I suspect you know this already. And that you're doing that it now.
> and have handbooks re: playing to the invisible audience, goading people into fight responses, etc.
Who is antifa??? More FUD. This is, in my opinion, a very lazy and poorly researched argument against the anti-fascist movement. Especially in a country where crime reporting is run through an institution with ties to white supremacy and roots in crushing strikes and capturing escaped slaves. Show me the data. Show me the pattern of left wing terror.
All it takes is a few dudes with an iron cross tattoo to fudge the numbers here or there. It's really not uncommon, again, if you look at what happens often, not what happens loudest.
>I always find these sorts of discussions sorely lacking an understanding of The Tolerance Paradox.
I can't possibly speak for Popper, but I suspect that he'd disapprove of intolerance from any group towards any other group. Let's not tolerate threats or double standards of any kind, whether it's a man defending that he said "kill all women" sarcastically or a woman defending that she said "kill all men" sarcastically. One can acknowledge that a man saying it should be taken more seriously (for a variety of reasons) while also acknowledging that the acceptance of generalized vitriol towards groups based on at-birth traits shouldn't have directional weighting. This is a blind spot and form of implicit bias I find many well-meaning progressives fall into.
Also, although it doesn't necessarily apply here (since most would agree talking about killing groups of people shouldn't be tolerated), I almost always find that people who bring up Popper's paradox of tolerance tend to wield it like a cudgel to draw arbitrary and absolute lines as they see fit.
Agreed that you shouldn't be using Popper as a cornerstone, but I really think it's a great tool for getting folks to step outside a limited perspective. A foot in the door when trying to introduce the difference between hate speech and retaliatory frustration.
I think it's also worth mentioning that you are very correct in a need for subtlety -- "kill all women" isn't something you're going to see very often any more. Rather, we get some nonsense about the moral arc of the universe and another endless discussion while people continue to be harmed. I knew (happily past tense) a couple guys who just couldn't kick their absolute vitriol for seeing women thrive while they were struggling. It's super nasty and, in my experience, a way more dangerous thing than someone going off about killing women verbatim.
Thanks for pointing out the blind spot though! I've found that way of thinking about morality to be really positive and forgiving -- to view something as a correctable omission rather than a character flaw.
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.
- A post about finishing shampoo and conditioner at the same time
- Celebration of a black female CEO
- Discussion of abortion
- Discussion of Women's only gyms (pros/cons/benefits/etc)
- Discussion about marketing vis-a-vis unhealthy body image
- Inappropriate boss in a meeting
None of those posts are even about men, let alone "hate speech against half the species?" So the emphasis is definitely on you to show that this is a popular usage of the sub.
Subs don't get removed for a scattering of hateful comments, the moderators are expected to deal with those. Subs get banned because their popular purpose is against Reddit's rules or their moderators are unable/unwilling to enforce the rules.
Without specific examples and links cited, this discussion will just run in circles. It probably will anyway, but it has no way of not without citations.
its pointless to bikeshed this. People did the same to defend TD and other crazy communities. Most of the posts are fine, but occasionally blatant sexism will make the front page and mods don't do anything about it, or even encourage it by putting the post in "real believer" mode where opposing viewpoints can't exist. Same as TD.
"A message to all men" . Basically telling "all men" their opinions aren't valued or wanted on the sub. Wonderful. And it hit the Reddit front page. Imagine a "mancave" sub on Reddit with mods saying women's opinions don't matter and aren't welcome here and shit like that. It would be banned immediately, probably after making 5 o'clock news
That's...literally not what that message says, "basically" or otherwise.
It literally says the opposite, in fact
> Men, I have a request: Please, think twice before you reply to a post that you can't relate to. I'm not asking you to leave this sub, because I think that it's valuable to read about other people's experiences to learn about their unique challenges in this world.
We could do this same exercise with r/the_donald. While it's easy to find a few bad apples in any of these subreddits, it's pretty egregious to generalize it to the entire community.
TwoXChromosomes has improved dramatically since it was first made a general sub. I'm sure it drove most of the misandry to other smaller subs. If anything it's a good example that exposing hate and echo chambers to a wider audience can help improve them in some cases.
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 of being part of a community that has hate, but also positive information, the hate groups are going to be forced into a more focused hate forum. It is a means to further push people to the fringes which could further radicalize folks.
Essentially, Reddit etc. doesn't make people hate more, the internet just exposes the hate that already existed. It is part of a larger cultural problem. People don't generally become hateful after seeing 12 memes, they are raised in an environment that breeds hate. Banning the subreddits _feels_ good, but it is not a solution to the core problem.
Everything I've seen suggests that removing platforms actually does reduce this stuff. It's analogous to the argument that there's no point trying to reduce suicides; people are just gong to do it some other way. But no, if you put a barrier on a bridge, suicides really do go down in total. If you make something even just a little bit more difficult, you reduce it.
No, but places to be hateful on a major platform where users might accidentally stumble into your community and stay are. I would guess that most people who get wrapped up in that stuff stumble upon it, rather than it being something they sought out on their own.
The idea behind deplatforming hate is to reduce the reach of hatespeech to those that explicitly desire it and the platforms that willingly provide it.
That, in turn, reduces the funding of the hate prophets - many German alt-righters found themselves in a serious financial crunch after Youtube and Facebook booted them off so they could only solicit for donations on their lousy-visited Telegram channels.
Side benefit: when the people that post hate speech on mass platforms like Reddit, Facebook and Twitter, members of marginalized groups get this shit into their feeds. Driving the hate speechers away increases the quality of usage of the marginalized persons.
This is something I can agree with as being more useful. Anything that can be done to reduce funding to hate groups is fantastic.
But there is a real difference between using deplatforming as a means of defunding hate groups and what happened with Reddit. Reddit itself has no means of monetization. While you could certainly argue that Reddit leads to platforms that do monetize, that is a slippery slope.
This is a classic confusion about the nature of currency and networks. Direct monetization is one kind of success but not the only one.
For one thing, a hate prophet doesn't need money to be successful. A hate prophet needs _listeners_ to be successful. Reducing access to accidental listeners who then get sucked into a brainwashing machine is reducing access to success.
And then there's the fact that Reddit is a funnel, not just a destination. People go there just to go there, and then they accidentally stumble into hate cults. Some of those people get sucked into rabbit holes and find themselves in poisoned wonderlands. "follow me for more", "like and subscribe", "click here to find out", "read my blog", "watch my channel", "so and so says". Reddit isn't where the shit ends, but it is where the shit starts for many people.
> While you could certainly argue that Reddit leads to platforms that do monetize, that is a slippery slope.
FYI, the slippery slope argument is considered to be a logical fallacy so you probably shouldn't use it.
If this were a serious logical debate, I wouldn't use it. It is indeed a fallacy, but it expresses a phenomenon in a way that is generally understood by most people. That is, acceptance of one link in a chain of events makes the acceptance of the following links easier. The fallacy is two parts, one that the above is even true (it doesn't make it easier in all cases) and that it leads to a form of reductio ad absurdum (gay marriage will lead to people marrying cats etc).
Sometimes logical fallacies get a point across in a way that is the most succinct.
> 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.
> Essentially, Reddit etc. doesn't make people hate more, the internet just exposes the hate that already existed.
I don't know if we can say this without debate. Certainly people have fears that could be stoked into hate, but it's the stoking that matters. The only reason propaganda exists is because it works.
Very true and interesting twist of fate. I find it amusing that any group becomes very good in science only once they’re under attack. See Galileo: They defined the scientific process when they were under bigoted criticism.
In fact, the best way to ensure that a group who’s right makes an excellent demonstration of their correctness, is to censor them and tell them they’re wrong. That is how we get incredible advances of science. And that is also how huge totems become mainstream. Think « Winnie the Poo » in China, or the « 13% » number in USA.
I think it just depends on the number of subreddits. If 7,000 is 1% of subs, then it seems like a good investment. If it's 30%, then yeah, that's.. not great.
The last bunch of bans was simply a leftist purge, banning several subreddits that at most advocated violence against landlords, not really a "minority".
As you can see a big majority, over three quarters, of banned subreddits had less than ten users, and 99% had less than 5000 subscribers.
It's very possible that the other 82% are distributed over the larger, more popular subreddits which are not encouraging hate speech. As an example, if someone posted antisemitic content on r/dataisbeautiful, that might be counted towards those 82% but that is not a reason to ban the whole subreddit.
most of the popular subreddits encourage hate against police and Trump supporters, just see how much cheering you get when there is a video of BLM assaulting someone wearing MAGA hat, or a white "Karen" (typically middle-aged white woman) is humiliated or assaulted by mob, or an officer sprayed and blinded when arresting some looter.
These threads full of raging hate are reaching Reddit front page on regular basis, with tens of thousands of upvotes and tons of social "awards", while anything going against the social justice narrative is shut down immediately, like in that 18% ban which affected many dissenting subreddits.
There are popular subreddits literally encouraging racial segregation, like "BPT Country Club" which requires sending picture of your forearm to prove you're black in order to participate.
This kind of thing radicalizes people on both sides.
Right, because hating someone for being a jew and hating someone for being a racist are totally equivalent. Both sides are bad! Only us enlightened centrists realize that you have to take everything in moderation, and must both hate and accept jews and racists equally much!
the thing is 'racist' these days means 'you disagree with my opinion', it's just a meaningless label used to cancel people whose voice you want to suppress
And you are parroting the arguments used against fascists trying to take power.
No, "racist" doesn't mean whoever disagree with an opinion, it might mean for you on the circles you take part and consider somewhat important enough in your life to let them impart that impression, racist just means what it has always meant: people that willingly or by ignorance use ethnicity (or race) as the basis for judging someone's else character, life situation and/or social status.
This hasn't changed and there are a lot of those out of the woodwork, if you are basing yourself out of Twitter then... Yeah, you are in a toxic place.
Reading stuff like this really concerns me. If you go to /r/worldnews, /r/news or /r/politics, there is literally none pro-right content, and all the comments in existing posts are bashing the GOP/right/Trump/whatever.
I am not an EnLiGhTeNeD CeNtRiSt, I am not from the US at all. Its just weird to see the echo chamber reddit is, calling ALL the people protesting against BLM racists, nazis and what not. At the same time, they are celebrating BLM rioters looting and assaulting people they dont like, but its ok, because they are nazis and racists.
Now why I am concerned. Some people on reddit are calling for forceful disbandment of the GOP. Guys - having just prominent 2 political parties is bad enough already. Reducing that number to 1 is a bad idea IMO.
"But the Democrats are sensible and smart unlike those racist Republicans!"... I wonder where this slippery slope ends. I am sure there's nothing good at the end of it though.
The problem with whataboutism in this context is not that it presents a false equivalence, although it does, or that your examples are exaggerated, though they are. It's that it presupposes that Reddit rules are an attempt to enforce justice, as opposed to make money on a website.
It so happens that, in this time in history, posting "I don't like X people" leads to vitriolic arguments and Why Reddit is Evil long-form essays in the Atlantic where X=black, but is largely ignored where X=white. If you think that's unfair, fine, I can see the reasoning, but I think you have to take it up with the society that produces that outcome. Reddit just wants a forum for people to talk about sports and TV shows and boats and look at ads for same.
there is still plenty of hate content there, mostly addressed against Trump supporters and anyone who disagrees with BLM agenda and violence. it's a radical left site.
Reddit hasn't been taken over by communist SJWs, they're just preparing for an IPO. If you're unhappy that participating in capitalism usually entails some kind of unaccountable censorship you should probably revise some of your pre-existing beliefs about capitalism.
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[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 186 ms ] threadNot sure what happened, but it went from “the lone gunmen” to “angry American central” over night, and the place has royally sucked since.
r/CampusConservative r/HateCrimeHoaxes r/rightwingcomics r/rightwinglgbt r/Nationalism r/DebateAltRight r/GenderCritical r/blackcrimestatistics r/againstdiversity r/Holodomor r/ExposeCulturalMarxism r/AltRightChristian r/The_Donald r/BanBigMouth
[0] - https://www.reddit.com/r/reclassified/comments/hi41t2/the_ba...
American conservatives have pretty eagerly woven prejudice into the ideological fabric of the party. Similarly the party seems willing to promote or at least enable blatant criminality.
They made their socially-regressive bed and now they can lie in it. "Fiscal conservatives" who don't see themselves in the rest of the picture would be right to feel disenfranchised.
Wow, what a complete load of horse dung.
American Conservatives aren't the ones burning down cities, looting businesses, beating people up, threatening people with violence, and demanding white people give up their suburban homes on an almost daily basis -- justifying it all under the false guise of oppression.
The level of denial is sickening, but ok.
Republicans of half a century ago would have hanged the modern republican party politicians as traitors and seditionists.
Freedom.
Private property includes the freedom to restrict what occurs on that property. Reddit is private property.
Same goes for Hacker News.
Let freedom ring!
edit: guess people don't like freedom :-(
Would Hacker News be "censoring" me if they deleted my submission to TIMECUBE? Isn't it "MAH RAIGHT" to proselytize my sincere and deeply-held beliefs about TIMECUBE?
Are you CENSORIZING MAH FREEZE PEECH by downvoting and thus hiding from public view, this comment?
I've only ever seen bigots who think transgendered people are icky and can't stop being "ironic" about it getting "censored".
It is basic human decency.
Do you have an example of someone who was "censored" inappropriately?
I can cite the recent "Conservative Bigots v. Twitter and others" cases, every single thread of political philosophy from anarchism to totalitarianism in which private property is allowed, and the terms of service that people agree to when using an online resource...
...and all they can do is wave their hands and chant "censorship".
> MAH FREEZE PEECH
Mocking the southern accent?
If you think it is wrong to mock the southern accent, and the oxy-addicted incesty bigoted white trash who speak using it, it is only right and proper that you also think it is ok to have banned the subreddits Reddit is being criticized for banning.
But faux-libertarian techbros only believe in what they believe when it benefits them.
That said, there is a difference between thinking something wrong, and thinking something should be banned - esp when you conflate censorship of an individual within a community (HN poster), with censorship of the whole community itself (a subreddit).
Are you calling me a techbro because I'm posting on HN? Doesn't that mean you are too?
[0] - https://www.reddit.com/r/redditsecurity/comments/idclo1/unde...
Am I missing something here? I read the post and it's not clearly defined at all. All they did is mention was:
>To generate and categorize the list of keywords, we used a wide variety of resources and AutoModerator* rules from large subreddits that deal with abuse regularly.
Again, how does one draw the line on 'hate speech' or 'hate content'?
is that's what's happening though? Are advertisers leaving reddit? AFAIK advertisers can already decide what subreddits their ads appear on. Are people leaving reddit to a "nicer" platform? What type of legal liabilities is reddit being subject to?
And, anecdotal as it may be, I think it's interesting to mention these aren't softies either... the thing they all share in common is that they work too long and too hard making ends meet to willfully spend time browsing a site that can go from fun to making them feel very unsafe in the blink of an eye. Sure you can "just get over it" when you read something nasty online. But if you've lived your life in relative fear, it takes a ton of energy to do so.
I can't speak to if they are leaving Reddit, but they are absolutely leaving other social media platforms such as Facebook as well as traditional media platforms for exactly this reason.
> Are people leaving reddit to a "nicer" platform?
I don't have this data at scale. Anecdata I have suggests that most people I know have been turned off by the sheer level of vitrol which appears on Reddit these days.
> What type of legal liabilities is reddit being subject to?
Regulatory risk in the form of being made responsible for user submitted content which they really don't want to be. If even a subset of hateful users go on to commit violence in the real world and it turns out that they fermented their ideology on Reddit and Reddit did nothing, it could renew calls by lawmakers to make site operators responsible for user submitted content. Such a regulatory change could potentially take down the entire business.
There is also a smaller, related business continuity risk from Reddit's providers. Look at what happened to 8chan. In response to 8chan not regulating hate speech, CloudFlare terminated their service and no US provider would touch them with a 10 foot pole. it took them 3 months and a total rebrand to get back up. While Reddit is a much larger entity, they are not immune to this risk.
Booting these users gives them plausible deniability at little cost and also allows them to make a stronger case to lawmakers if questioned.
There's no objective definition of "tall", and yet it's still a useful adjective.
"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.).
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!"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnoreligious_group
> unless they specifically make the person unable to do their job
Clashing with their employer would make someone unable to do their job
The idea of race is deeply flawed and riddled with contradictions. it has no real meaning in terms of genetics.
I hear a dissenting bent but am unable to connect your comment to the topic of what makes immutable vs mutable characteristics.
Also, I cannot help but observe, whether or not race has meaning in genetics, we cannot simply pretend the social construct does not exist. Therefore it's still relevant & topical to discrimination & protected classes. It's literally right there in the Civil Rights Act.
We aren’t talking about a government definition of hateful, in which case you would expect limits to be set by immutable characteristics, instead it’s about Reddit deciding what is off limit for them.
Gender is a can of worms - sex is immutable, gender seems to be (like religion or race) a socially conditioned performance of expected behaviour. Personally I don’t think it’s helpful - we should see ourselves as unique individuals with agency - much less immutable.
"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?
What the heck is going on with that website.
>While the rule on hate protects such groups, it does not protect all groups or all forms of identity. For example, the rule does not protect groups of people who are in the majority or who promote such attacks of hate.
I think eliminating double standards in the enforcement of these policies is crucial for them to be effective and accepted by a community. You're just trading one set of implicit and explicit biases in for another, and many of the same issues start to bubble up. Yes, certainly not all of the same issues in the case of one group wielding more capability to carry out a threat than another group, but many of the important ones, especially when it comes to matters of epistemology and reasoning.
This includes "majority" populations and those more privileged. We shouldn't give hateful or blanket statements for them as they never decided to be that way. Putting entire groups of people based on some trait they were born with on blast is wrong.
Also the direction is a slippery slope too. "Well yes I can direct blanket negative/stereotypical/hate statements against Indians because I myself am a disabled, trans minority" ad-infinitum.
Some of use are, but we seem to be losing.
> Shouldn't someone be judged on their character and thoughts, not their biology or circumstances?
This is considered racist now. This was explained to me by a friend that if a person wants to be seen as a "$race man", than not seeing him that way would be offensive.
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" it reads darker, based on a belief that men subject women to violence specifically based on their gender/sexuality. Even if it's clearly not meant to be taken literally, there's still a dark underpinning culturally (e.g. see Marilyn Manson's 'I Want to Kill You Like They Do in The Movies’)
As a result, "kill all women" is much less likely to be said in mixed company; the more common communication discriminating against women will be longer form, and not easily string-matched.
Therefore, with 'even' enforcement, an offhand complaint about men's place in society will often instantly trigger an automatic deletion/ban, while a misogynistic screed will require human review to be removed.
Now if you're advocating a worldview that carries implicit, targeted violence (looking at you, Neo-Nazis) I think it's a different story. At that point, it becomes a question of what is possible and practical to reduce the overall amount of violence.. even if it means punching someone who wants you dead or subjugated.
Even without the literal meaning, vitriol towards gigantic groups of people based on at-birth traits isn't healthy or rational for anyone. (To make the comparison more palatable, imagine a complaint about an ex-romantic partner followed by a frustrated exclamation of "fuck men" or "fuck women", depending on the parties involved. I don't see why either of these statements should be privileged over the other.) I think double standards should be eliminated across the board, rather than tipping the scales so that a side that historically wielded them is now subjected to them.
Reddit risks closing the window of discourse so tightly that it becomes a Facebook, Instagram or Tik Tok. The problem for Reddit, of course, is that there is already a Facebook, Instagram and Tik Tok.
I've already left the platform.
It's easy to string match, bans/deletions can be instant and abrupt. They see the quick removal of their post and compare it to what they perceive as genuinely hateful posts that stay up because the post cleverly avoids violations that are easy to include in content policies.
Check out the "men are trash" question here https://www.theverge.com/interface/2019/10/3/20895119/facebo...
There are many, many people who think this way.
What do you mean by this?
For me personally, I think that "kill all men" or "all men are trash" can have a harmful impact (particularly on boys) even when stated as hyperbole in response to systemic misogyny.
This might have been true once but the ascent of fourth-wave (misandrist) feminism has made short shrift with the assumption that women who say "kill all men" have a different intention than men who say "kill all women". In both cases it is most likely not to be taken literally, in both cases (humoristic intentions excepted) the message has a dark underpinning. Where in the "kill all women" case there might be a background of literal truth, in the "kill all men" case there is a background of wishful thinking, an idea that society is better off without men, that men are evil and unredeemable.
Reports of genuine, targeted violence against reactionaries are almost non-existent while just a few days ago three trans women were nearly killed while waiting for a cab. If banning r/dropthet (a transphobic subreddit) reduces the amount of eyeballs absorbing phobic talking points that has to be a good thing, no?
I always find these sorts of discussions sorely lacking an understanding of The Tolerance Paradox. Hopefully more folks will begin to see the implicit violence present in minority targeted hate speech. It really does lead to loss of life all too often.
Someone is wearing a MAGA hat. Someone else is wearing a Biden hat.
Which do you think is more likely to be assaulted?
Here's the thing though -- where's the data? Has that actually happened in any significance? Especially compared to right wing violence.
I've been following the pipe bomb situation pretty closely so I've missed a lot of that stuff probably.
But assuming you don't live in the US: just Google 'portland violence'
I actually have a few mutuals who have been on the ground in Portland and I'm in the southeast.
I had seen this stuff when it first happened but it's just hard to pay much attention with other deadly force being deployed IMO. If you google Skylor Jernigan, you get nothing but local articles. There's a strong false equivalency being deployed there.
e: almost forgot where I am! I rarely get to make this point but here we go: nitpicking out individualized acts of violence to discredit a large, decentralized movement is the exact same thing as FUD, IMO. It's a tactic for maintaining unequal power dynamics.
That would forbid criticism of any violent decentralized movement.
> There's a strong false equivalency being deployed there.
I don't think there's any equivalency. There's no widespread looting and assault from the center or the right here.
Antifa specifically are willing to use violence to suppress disbelievers as part of their manifesto, and have handbooks re: playing to the invisible audience, goading people into fight responses, etc. However I suspect you know this already. And that you're doing that it now.
Establish a pattern of behavior?
> There's no widespread looting and assault from the center or the right here.
I know it's low hanging fruit but do you find this compelling?: https://www.businessinsider.com/right-wing-extremists-kill-3...
> and have handbooks re: playing to the invisible audience, goading people into fight responses, etc.
Who is antifa??? More FUD. This is, in my opinion, a very lazy and poorly researched argument against the anti-fascist movement. Especially in a country where crime reporting is run through an institution with ties to white supremacy and roots in crushing strikes and capturing escaped slaves. Show me the data. Show me the pattern of left wing terror.
> And that you're doing that it now.
Not even touching this..
Oh also, are you sure you've been seeing literature from the "real" "antifa"? https://www.cbsnews.com/news/twitter-fake-antifa-acount-whit...
I think we're done here.
Yes, sir.
But also ...why though?
All it takes is a few dudes with an iron cross tattoo to fudge the numbers here or there. It's really not uncommon, again, if you look at what happens often, not what happens loudest.
I can't possibly speak for Popper, but I suspect that he'd disapprove of intolerance from any group towards any other group. Let's not tolerate threats or double standards of any kind, whether it's a man defending that he said "kill all women" sarcastically or a woman defending that she said "kill all men" sarcastically. One can acknowledge that a man saying it should be taken more seriously (for a variety of reasons) while also acknowledging that the acceptance of generalized vitriol towards groups based on at-birth traits shouldn't have directional weighting. This is a blind spot and form of implicit bias I find many well-meaning progressives fall into.
Also, although it doesn't necessarily apply here (since most would agree talking about killing groups of people shouldn't be tolerated), I almost always find that people who bring up Popper's paradox of tolerance tend to wield it like a cudgel to draw arbitrary and absolute lines as they see fit.
I think it's also worth mentioning that you are very correct in a need for subtlety -- "kill all women" isn't something you're going to see very often any more. Rather, we get some nonsense about the moral arc of the universe and another endless discussion while people continue to be harmed. I knew (happily past tense) a couple guys who just couldn't kick their absolute vitriol for seeing women thrive while they were struggling. It's super nasty and, in my experience, a way more dangerous thing than someone going off about killing women verbatim.
Thanks for pointing out the blind spot though! I've found that way of thinking about morality to be really positive and forgiving -- to view something as a correctable omission rather than a character flaw.
On their front page right now:
- A post about finishing shampoo and conditioner at the same time
- Celebration of a black female CEO
- Discussion of abortion
- Discussion of Women's only gyms (pros/cons/benefits/etc)
- Discussion about marketing vis-a-vis unhealthy body image
- Inappropriate boss in a meeting
None of those posts are even about men, let alone "hate speech against half the species?" So the emphasis is definitely on you to show that this is a popular usage of the sub.
Subs don't get removed for a scattering of hateful comments, the moderators are expected to deal with those. Subs get banned because their popular purpose is against Reddit's rules or their moderators are unable/unwilling to enforce the rules.
Best example I've seen https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/hzis4w/a_n...
"A message to all men" . Basically telling "all men" their opinions aren't valued or wanted on the sub. Wonderful. And it hit the Reddit front page. Imagine a "mancave" sub on Reddit with mods saying women's opinions don't matter and aren't welcome here and shit like that. It would be banned immediately, probably after making 5 o'clock news
It literally says the opposite, in fact
> Men, I have a request: Please, think twice before you reply to a post that you can't relate to. I'm not asking you to leave this sub, because I think that it's valuable to read about other people's experiences to learn about their unique challenges in this world.
We could do this same exercise with r/the_donald. While it's easy to find a few bad apples in any of these subreddits, it's pretty egregious to generalize it to the entire community.
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 of being part of a community that has hate, but also positive information, the hate groups are going to be forced into a more focused hate forum. It is a means to further push people to the fringes which could further radicalize folks.
Essentially, Reddit etc. doesn't make people hate more, the internet just exposes the hate that already existed. It is part of a larger cultural problem. People don't generally become hateful after seeing 12 memes, they are raised in an environment that breeds hate. Banning the subreddits _feels_ good, but it is not a solution to the core problem.
Neither are ways of committing suicide, and yet stopping people from accessing _obvious_ and _easy_ options does reduce the number of people doing it.
That, in turn, reduces the funding of the hate prophets - many German alt-righters found themselves in a serious financial crunch after Youtube and Facebook booted them off so they could only solicit for donations on their lousy-visited Telegram channels.
Side benefit: when the people that post hate speech on mass platforms like Reddit, Facebook and Twitter, members of marginalized groups get this shit into their feeds. Driving the hate speechers away increases the quality of usage of the marginalized persons.
But there is a real difference between using deplatforming as a means of defunding hate groups and what happened with Reddit. Reddit itself has no means of monetization. While you could certainly argue that Reddit leads to platforms that do monetize, that is a slippery slope.
This is a classic confusion about the nature of currency and networks. Direct monetization is one kind of success but not the only one.
For one thing, a hate prophet doesn't need money to be successful. A hate prophet needs _listeners_ to be successful. Reducing access to accidental listeners who then get sucked into a brainwashing machine is reducing access to success.
And then there's the fact that Reddit is a funnel, not just a destination. People go there just to go there, and then they accidentally stumble into hate cults. Some of those people get sucked into rabbit holes and find themselves in poisoned wonderlands. "follow me for more", "like and subscribe", "click here to find out", "read my blog", "watch my channel", "so and so says". Reddit isn't where the shit ends, but it is where the shit starts for many people.
> While you could certainly argue that Reddit leads to platforms that do monetize, that is a slippery slope.
FYI, the slippery slope argument is considered to be a logical fallacy so you probably shouldn't use it.
Sometimes logical fallacies get a point across in a way that is the most succinct.
A fallacious point. That's the point.
Citation needed.
Tautalogically, making things harder to discover literally does make them harder to discover.
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.
I don't know if we can say this without debate. Certainly people have fears that could be stoked into hate, but it's the stoking that matters. The only reason propaganda exists is because it works.
That seems like a dismal result, practically an admission that many of the bans were unjustified and/or subs that should have been banned were not.
In fact, the best way to ensure that a group who’s right makes an excellent demonstration of their correctness, is to censor them and tell them they’re wrong. That is how we get incredible advances of science. And that is also how huge totems become mainstream. Think « Winnie the Poo » in China, or the « 13% » number in USA.
the number of subreddits shouldn't matter, what actually should matter is post volume.
Are we really doing this?
https://www.reddit.com/r/redditsecurity/comments/idclo1/unde...
As you can see a big majority, over three quarters, of banned subreddits had less than ten users, and 99% had less than 5000 subscribers.
It's very possible that the other 82% are distributed over the larger, more popular subreddits which are not encouraging hate speech. As an example, if someone posted antisemitic content on r/dataisbeautiful, that might be counted towards those 82% but that is not a reason to ban the whole subreddit.
These threads full of raging hate are reaching Reddit front page on regular basis, with tens of thousands of upvotes and tons of social "awards", while anything going against the social justice narrative is shut down immediately, like in that 18% ban which affected many dissenting subreddits.
There are popular subreddits literally encouraging racial segregation, like "BPT Country Club" which requires sending picture of your forearm to prove you're black in order to participate.
This kind of thing radicalizes people on both sides.
if anything BLM propaganda combined with violence and unprecedented popular support really remind me the rise of these guys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmabteilung
they use the same bullying and intimidation tactics to grab political power
Racists are playing the blame card, and shifting the goals more now though.
No, "racist" doesn't mean whoever disagree with an opinion, it might mean for you on the circles you take part and consider somewhat important enough in your life to let them impart that impression, racist just means what it has always meant: people that willingly or by ignorance use ethnicity (or race) as the basis for judging someone's else character, life situation and/or social status.
This hasn't changed and there are a lot of those out of the woodwork, if you are basing yourself out of Twitter then... Yeah, you are in a toxic place.
I am not an EnLiGhTeNeD CeNtRiSt, I am not from the US at all. Its just weird to see the echo chamber reddit is, calling ALL the people protesting against BLM racists, nazis and what not. At the same time, they are celebrating BLM rioters looting and assaulting people they dont like, but its ok, because they are nazis and racists.
Dont even get me started on Toronto BLM chapter founder saying "White skin is subhuman" - https://twitter.com/therealmissjo/status/966347556304367618 or Bill de Blasio quoting Guevara's "hasta la victoria siempre" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqS1nZkB9sg .
Now why I am concerned. Some people on reddit are calling for forceful disbandment of the GOP. Guys - having just prominent 2 political parties is bad enough already. Reducing that number to 1 is a bad idea IMO.
"But the Democrats are sensible and smart unlike those racist Republicans!"... I wonder where this slippery slope ends. I am sure there's nothing good at the end of it though.
It so happens that, in this time in history, posting "I don't like X people" leads to vitriolic arguments and Why Reddit is Evil long-form essays in the Atlantic where X=black, but is largely ignored where X=white. If you think that's unfair, fine, I can see the reasoning, but I think you have to take it up with the society that produces that outcome. Reddit just wants a forum for people to talk about sports and TV shows and boats and look at ads for same.
And they say hate speech against majority (which spez implied as straight white men) is not 'hate speech'.